Calculus - Related Rates - Ships in the Day

Problem: At noon, ship A is 90 km west of ship B. Ship A is sailing south at 40 km/h and ship B is sailing north at 20 km/h. How fast is the distance between the ships changing at 2:00 PM?

Click and drag the slider t to change the time.
The rate of change of the distance between the ships at time t is given at right.

Sorry, the GeoGebra Applet could not be started. Please make sure that Java 1.4.2 (or later) is installed and active in your browser (Click here to install Java now)

Experiment a bit:
• Click and drag the green point x to change the starting distance between ships.
• Click and drag the sliders va and vb to change the velocities of the ships.

Author: LFS,        http://mathcasts.org/mtwiki        See also: Calculus with Geogebra       Created with GeoGebra