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How far is it?

Our brains gure out a great deal about the world without any conscious eort on our part. One such ability is determining the distance to objects that we see. 1. Look at objects both nearby and far away. What kinds of information do you use to determine how far away an object is? Do you need two eyes to perceive any of this information? Becky, whose eyes are shown in the diagram below, is looking at a ball. Each eye is aimed inward making an angle of 5 from a straight ahead position. Can you determine how far away the ball is? If so, do so. If not, why not?

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3. 4.

Beckys pupils are 63 mm apart. Can you now determine how far away the ball is? If so, do so. If not, why not? Find a formula for d, the distance to an object positioned directly in front of a person, given w, the separation between their eyes, and , the angle that each eye is aimed inward. Josh is looking at a car. His pupils are 61 mm apart, his left eye is aimed 2.3 to the right and his right eye is aimed 0.7 to the left. How far is the car from each eye?

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Problems with a Point: October 11, 2002

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How far is it?: Problem

In problem 3, you showed that if a brain has an internal representation of the distance between its eyes and of the angles at which its eyes are aimed, then it can determine how far away an object is. But continuous measurements, such as distance and angle, are not knowable with complete precisionthere is always potential error in our answers. When you use mathematics to study real world settings, you can learn about the limitations of your results by performing a sensitivity analysis. A sensitivity analysis tells you how much your answer would change in response to small changes in your initial data. 6. What if Beckys brain could estimate the angle at which it was aiming her eyes to within 1 ? Use the formula that you developed for problem 4 to nd Beckys distance to the ball if the actual value for was 4 or 6 . By what percent do these these new answers dier from your original answer for 5 ? 7. Repeat the sensitivity analysis that you performed for problem 6 for the case when Becky is looking at her cat and = 1.1 . Does a 1 error mean the same thing in all cases? Becky is focusing both eyes on the tip of her nose which projects 30 mm out from her face. What is ? Becky is looking at a hilltop a kilometer away. What is ? Do you think that distance estimates in this range are based primarily on eye angles? Why or why not?

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Problems with a Point: October 11, 2002

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How far is it?: Answers

Answers
1. Possible answers include how large the object appears to be compared with how large you know it to be, whether the object is behind or in front of other objects whose distance you can estimate, how distinct the object appears (e.g., on a foggy day), how bright it is, etc. None of these possibilities require two eyes. Adding a segment from one eye to the other creates a triangle. Angle measurements alone are insucient for determining the size of the triangle and, therefore, the distance. We need to know the length of a side. This situation is related to the Angle-Angle Similarity Theoremwe only know enough about the triangle to be certain of its proportions and not its scale.

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Given the length of a side, we can now apply the Law of Sines or we can introduce an auxiliary line and use the tangent ratio (see the diagram below). These approaches nd slightly dierent distances:

Problems with a Point: October 11, 2002

c EDC 2002

How far is it?: Answers

(a)

The two smaller angles at the ball are each 5 , so the entire angle is 10 . Using the law of sines on the entire triangle yields: sin 85 10 = sin . ball-to-eye distance 63 mm (sin 85 ) 63 mm So, the ball-to-eye distance equals (63 mm) sin 10 0.996195 361 mm (to the nearest millimeter). 0.173648 With an altitude added to the triangle: . tan 85 = ball-to-midpoint-between-the-eyes-distance 31.5mm Thus, the ball-to-midpoint-between-the-eyes-distance equals 31.5mm tan 85 or approximately 360 mm.

(b)

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This problem has the same structure as problem 3. However, when we do the same steps in terms of w and , we end up with a formula. Again, there are two possible answers (both of which use the diagram below):

Problems with a Point: October 11, 2002

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How far is it?: Answers

(a)

Using the law of sines on the entire triangle yields:

sin(90) d1

so d1 = This formula simplies, using two trigonometric idenw cos w tities to d1 = 2 sin = 2 sin . cos (b) Finding the length of the altitude yields: w cot 2 . tan(90 ) = d w . So, d2 = 2 2 For which angles will these two answers dier the most? For angles close to 90 , the dierence will be close to w . 2

sin(2) , w w sin(90) . sin(2)

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Using the law of sines gives: sin 89.3 sin 3 = 63 . So L 1204 mm. L mm sin 87.7 sin 3 = 63 mm . So R 1203 mm. R Therefore, even with these small angles, the car is less than 4 feet away.

Problems with a Point: October 11, 2002

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How far is it?: Answers

6.

Using the second formula from problem 4: 4 d = 63 cot = 450 and 2 6 = 300. d = 63 cot 2 360 The percent changes are: 450 = +25% and 360 17%.

300360 360

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Using the second formula from problem 4: 1 .1 d = 63 cot 1640 mm or approximately 1.6 meters. 2 63 cot 0.1 18048 mm or approximately 18 meters. d= 2 63 cot 2.1 859 mm. d= 2 1641 1641 The percent changes are: 18048 +1000% and 859 1641 1641 48%. In each case, the change in the distance is greater for smaller values of . The percent change in the results is reasonably close, but not identical, to the percent change in the angles being compared (e.g. 21 48%). .1 The formula that nds the distance to the middle of the face is most appropriate here: d2 = w cot , so 30 = 63 cot . 2 2 Solving gives = cot1 ( 60 ) 46 . 4 . 63 Either formula will give nearly identical answers. Switch ing to a standard unit of meters: d2 = w cot , so 1000 = 2 0.063 cot 1 2000 . Solving gives = cot ( ) 0 . 0018 . 2 0.063 Even slight errors in angle measurement will produce markedly dierent answers for distances in this range, so it is likely that our experience and knowledge of standard distances
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Problems with a Point: October 11, 2002

How far is it?: Answers

contributes signicantly to good estimates of distance.

Problems with a Point: October 11, 2002

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