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Useful Math. dot product (or scalar product) of two vectors. A photographer wants to get a picture of the upper three stories of a four- story apartment building. Each story is 15 feet tall (4.57m). She stands 20m away and holds her camera at a height of 1.1m above the ground.
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A photographer wants to get a picture of the upper three stories of a four- story apartment building. Each story is 15 feet tall (4.57m). She stands 20m away and holds her camera at a height of 1.1m above the ground.
A photographer wants to get a picture of the upper three stories of a four- story apartment building. Each story is 15 feet tall (4.57m). She stands 20m away and holds her camera at a height of 1.1m above the ground. What must be the minimum angular field of view of the camera if she is to get the picture?
y x A photographer wants to get a picture of the upper three stories of a four- story apartment building. Each story is 15 feet tall (4.57m). She stands 20m away and holds her camera at a height of 1.1m above the ground. What must be the minimum angular field of view of the camera if she is to get the picture?
solution: Draw two vectors from the camera to the building. Using the coordinate system shown, a vector to the top of the first story is and a vector to the top of the building is The angle between these vectors is
Binomial Formula Very often in physics we have to evaluate quantities of the form (1) (a +b)p where b is small compared to a (this is written as b << a and in practice means that b is smaller than b < a /10 ). The quantity in (1) is then very close to ap, but we often need a better approximation. Factor out a to get (a +b)p = ap (1 + )p where = b/a <<1. Then perform a Taylor series expansion about = 0.
This says that if d is small compared to R, x is MUCH smaller compared to R. For example, a typical glass lens might have R = 10cm, d = 1cm, so d/R = 0.1 Then x/R would be smaller than 0.002. In practice this means that x can be regarded as effectively zero in comparison with R.