Concept explainers
A Rotating Beacon Suppose that a fire truck is parked in front of a building as shown in the figure.
The beacon light on top of the fire truck is located 10 feet from the wall and has a light on each side. If the beacon light rotates 1 revolution every 2 seconds, then a model for determining the distance , in feet, that the beacon of light is from point A on the wall after seconds is given by
(a) Graph for .
(b) For what values of is the function undefined? Explain what this means in terms of the beam of light on the wall.
(c) Fill in the following table.
(d) Compute , and so on, for each consecutive value of . These are called first differences.
(e) Interpret the first differences found in part . What is happening to the speed of the beam of light as increases?
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