Title                Optimization of Water Slide Shape

Course           Calculus II – Math 2414, Fall 2011

Students        Ryan Kaiser

Summary:

A water theme park is exploring options for a new water slide. The end of the slide must extend horizontally 100 feet from the base of a 100-foot-tall platform. The goal of this project is to determine the ideal slide shape for minimizing a rider’s travel time from platform to pool. Strategies used in solving this problem will include deriving a general expression for the riding time in terms of a definite integral, determining convergence of potential improper integrals, and solving by numerical integration.