Season 3

NUMB3RS - Season 3 - "Finders Keepers" - The Leaf Drops

Topic: Experimental ProbabilityTI Classroom PDF
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Modeling the Drift Cone

Before dive teams or deep-sea robots search the ocean floor, they must calculate a boundary. Suppose the Cheetah drifts up to 3 meters3\text{ meters} horizontally for every 1 meter1\text{ meter} it descends.

If the ocean is 4,000 meters4,000\text{ meters} deep at the sink site, the maximum horizontal drift distance creates a circular search boundary on the seabed. This maximum horizontal drift serves as the radius rr of the circular search area:

r=4,000 m×3=12,000 m=12 kmr = 4,000\text{ m} \times 3 = 12,000\text{ m} = 12\text{ km}

Using this radius, we can calculate the maximum possible area of the search grid using A=πr2A = \pi r^2.

Experimental Drift Scatter Analysis

A visual projection of the 50 trial paper drops representing chaotic ocean current horizontal shift.

Adjust Target Radius
Radar Metrics
Points Captured:45 / 50
Proportion Captured:0.90
3:1
Drift Cone Physics:Because the yacht drifts horizontally 3 meters for every 1 meter of descent, an ocean depth of 4,000 meters creates a maximum theoretical search radius of 12,000 meters (12 kilometers).