The Scorpion and the Cricket

Figure A

Figure B

 I honestly had a hard time with a problem in class today.  This particular problem was a homework assignment in which we (students) had to figure out the shortest route the scorpion can crawl to get to the cricket.  As you can see in my drawings, I have labeled the scorpion and the cricket.  The scorpion is seated in the center of the right wall, 1 feet from the ceiling.  The cricket is seated in the center of the left wall, 1 feet from the floor.  The dimensions of the rectangular room is labeled as the base being 30 feet (a), the height being 12 feet (b), and the width being 12 feet (Figure A).

In Figure B, I unfolded the rectangle into a net and implemented the Pythagorean theorem.  Then I figured out my new dimensions and labeled them accordingly.  Then, I calculated my figures using the Pythagorean theorem which is a² + b² = c².  As shown in Figure B, the end result was 40 with the conclusion that the shortest route the scorpion can crawl to get to the cricket was 40 feet.

Sources:

Net of a Rectangular Room, Mesa Community College. Personal photograph by Miranda Tachine-Benally. 2016.

Tachine-Benally, Miranda. The Scorpion and the Cricket. 03 Oct. 2016. Classroom Worksheet. Mesa Community College, Mesa.