Math for Morons

Okay, this is like a step back to school for ya!

You have a machine. There are two "feed rollers" that feed stock into your machine, where it is automatically cut off. Stock is fed between these rollers, which are 8" in diameter. The amount of stock needed to be fed is 9", but the gearing being used varies from 1" to 30". You have a limited amount of stock, so you want to set this up as close as possible to the proper length before actually feeding stock into the machine. There are no indicators available.

How can you determine (roughly) how far the rollers have to turn? If you said 9", let me personally bitch slap you. What I'm talkin' is position of the rollers.

I usually can figure this out in seconds... but today it took me a half an hour. I have no set formula for figuring this out, I just do it. Today though, I was blank. No wonder why I dropped out of geometry... I always came up with the correct answers, but not the proper route needed to achieve said answer. Damn those axioms and theorems!

I did eventually figure it out, but it didn't seem like the usual way I do it. Let's see what you come up with.

Posted by That 1 Guy at May 10, 2005 11:40 PM | TrackBack