About
90
%
90% of the world’s goods are transported by ships which use diesel fuel. To reduce carbon footprint, engineers are developing wind power support for ships. Their proposal is to attach kite sails to ships and use the wind power to reduce diesel consumption and the negative impact on the environment.
A kite sail can fly at a height of
120
120 m. At that height, the wind speed is approximately
20
%
20% higher than down on the deck of the ship.
At what approximate speed does the wind blow into a kite sail when a wind speed of
25
25 km/h is measured on the deck of the ship?
Answer
5 km/h
20 km/h
30 km/h
45 km/h
Based on the given information, we can use the concept of basic trigonometry to solve this problem. Let us consider a right triangle where the height of the kite sail is 120m and the base is the distance between the deck of the ship and the kite sail, which we will refer to as x. The angle between the height and the hypotenuse (representing the wind speed) is given as theta, which we can calculate using the given wind speed of 25 km/h and the wind speed at 120m height being 20% higher. This gives us the equation: tan(theta) = (20/100) * 25/x. Solving for x, we get x = 15 km/h. Therefore, the wind blows into the kite sail at approximately 15 km/h. This is significantly lower than the wind speed on the deck, showing the effectiveness of using kite sails to reduce diesel consumption and carbon footprint. Happy sailing!
