Calculus Word Problem: Help!

Test Preparation
1

<p>I’m having a horrible time understanding how to even start this stupid word problem.</p>

<p>It is as follows:</p>

<p>I am going to knock out the bottom of the entire length of the south wall of my trailer and turn it into a greenhouse by replacing some of the bottom portion of the wall by a huge sloped piece of glass, which is quite expensive. I have already decided how much I will spend on the glass, and I can make the triangular ends of the greenhouse from various old automobiles I have lying around the front yard.</p>

<p>The floor space of the greenhouse is only usable if both my dog, Shep, and I can stand up in it, so some of the floor space will be unusable, but I don’t know how much. That will depend, of course, on how I configure the greenhouse. I would like to choose the dimensions of the greenhouse to get the most usable floor space in it, but I have no idea what the dimensions should be or how much usable space I will get. </p>

<p>Can anyone offer any guidance on how to set this all up and work it out? I’d be truly grateful.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance.</p>

2

<p>bump. please help!!!</p>

3

<p>please. bump. someone respond to this.</p>

4

<p>I am so confused…</p>

5

<p>I think its an optimization problem. I need to find the dimensions and the surface area. Still no clue.</p>

6

<p>Is that all you get for the problem? No specific units or anything?</p>

7

<p>Thats it! I think you are supposed to estimate values.</p>

8

<p>You need to get an expression that gives you the amount of usable floor space. </p>

<p>Other than that, you can’t do this problem because you aren’t given enough information. For all I know, your trailer can be half spherical. lol. My guess is that there’s some lame trick answer to this one. Maybe it’s that regardless of any shape of anything, you get max floor space by lying the piece of glass flat, going out of the trailer.</p>

9

<p>I dont think there’s any trick answer, unfortunately.</p>