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finding the height

04/12/2008 10:27 PM

two Tv sets, sitting beside eachother on a shelf in an appliance store,have the same screen height.one has a conventional screen,which is 5in. wider than its height the other has a wider high-definition screen which is 1.8 times as wide as its height. the diagonal measure of the wider screen is 14in. more than the diagonal measure of the smaller. what is the height of the screens,to the nearest 0.1in.??

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#1

Re: finding the height

04/13/2008 6:04 AM

Is this a riddle? If so, the answer is 45 barleycorns.

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#3
In reply to #1

Re: finding the height

04/13/2008 8:07 AM

no, you are wrong, the answer (and you're not going to like it) is 42.

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#4
In reply to #3

Re: finding the height

04/13/2008 8:22 AM

42 what? You better not be using Imperial Barleycorns! Is there a trick to subtracting the edge of the screen that I didn't consider?

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#6
In reply to #4

Re: finding the height

04/13/2008 11:00 PM

42 is the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything.

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#7
In reply to #6

Re: finding the height

04/14/2008 5:21 AM

Drat. I've been assuming it was the White Album. No wonder my life is a shambles!

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#2

Re: finding the height

04/13/2008 7:15 AM

Hello rams20

Thankfully we converted to metric measure, over 30 years ago.

Kind Regards....

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#5

Re: finding the height

04/13/2008 6:51 PM

Sounds like a homework question. It is not much of a riddle as the answer may be readily obtained by solving a quadratic equation. High school stuff!

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#8

Re: finding the height

04/14/2008 9:49 AM

Numbers don't matter. It's more of a personal preference issue.

Have you noticed that a circle on the smaller screen is a circle and on the wider screen it is an oval? I wonder if the manufacturers realize that...or is it a conspiracy to distort our concept of life.

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#9
In reply to #8

Re: finding the height

04/14/2008 1:28 PM

John Barleycorn is dead...........and the oval is stretched by that feature that makes people's faces fat, choose a different zoom; but you knew that all along you crafty dog.

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#10

Re: finding the height

04/14/2008 8:33 PM

rams20,

You've been demoted to rams19. You made a typo somewhere in this riddle.

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#11

Re: finding the height

05/13/2008 1:11 PM

The height of the sets is 27.4". The problem can not be solved by quadratic equation and a little more difficult than high school math.

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#12
In reply to #11

Re: finding the height

05/13/2008 2:31 PM

Your answer is correct. Your statement is wrong. The problem can be solved by quadratic equation. Consider:

d12= 2h2 + 10h +25

d22 = h2 + (1.8h)2 = 4.24 h2

d1 = d2 - 14, or, squaring both sides,

d12 = d22 - 28 d2 + 196

2h2 + 10h + 25 = 4.24h2 - 57.6h + 196

-171 = 2.24h2 - 67.66h which is a quadratic equation with solution h = 27.4

Please grovel a little for putting me to all this trouble.

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#13
In reply to #12

Re: finding the height

05/13/2008 7:11 PM

I'm not trying to get outa groveling, but I still think the question is flawed. Think aspect ratio.

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#14
In reply to #13

Re: finding the height

05/13/2008 7:53 PM

I don't see the flaw in stating the problem. I'm thinking aspect ratio, but it doesn't seem to help. By the way, I missed out a couple of superscripts in the equation reading:

2h2 + 10h + 25 = 4.24h2 - 57.6h + 196

It should have read:

2h2 + 10h + 25 = 4.24h2 - 57.6h + 196

Incidentally, a quadratic equation must have two roots. The second root is:

h = 2.78"

The first TV set would be 2.78 x 7.78 with a diagonal of 8.267". The second would be 2.78 x 5.012 with a diagonal of 5.233". The two diagonals would be 8.267" and 5.233" which differ by 14" when a negative value is taken for d1 in the equation:

d12 = (d2 - 14)2.

It is hard to visualize a negative diagonal, so I opted for h = 27.4 as the correct answer.

Okay TP45...you don't have to grovel...provided I can quit thinking aspect ratio.

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