THE DIDOS PROBLEM Goal

Possible Solution

Given the length of a line u, calculate a function y(x) such that the enclosed area is maximum.

Solution
This problem is dealt in two parts. The first part is to formulate the function of the given line and the area it will enclose, and the second step will be optimizing the area with the constraint on the perimeter. Part 1 If we have an enclosed curve, we can say that the curve can be described in terms of a particle tracing the curve. If the position of the particle is given by x(t) and y(t), where both are a function of time. As length can be stated as the product of velocity with the time, we can find the perimeter by integrating the velocity function with respect to time. We can express the velocity as follows = ()2 + ()2 dt = 2 + 2 dt

To get the complete length, that is, the perimeter of the enclosed area we can integrate the above equation with respect of t. In shorter for we may write as

Now that we have the perimeter, we need a relation between the perimeter and the area it encloses. This relation is given by the Greens theorem. + =

Here R and S are any functions that are smooth and are in the enclosed are. Another important property that they should have is that they have to differentiable. p and e represent the perimeter, or the length if the line enclosing the area, and the enclosed area respectively. Now if we choose = = 2 2 The equation becomes as follows We chose the functions as simple as possible and the negative is made so that the RHS term does not go to zero.

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1 + = + 2 2 2 + = 2 2

THE DIDOS PROBLEM

Now the RHS represents the area. We can thus say that

With this equation the first part of the question is completed. We move to the optimization now Step 2 For the second step we need formulate the Lagrangian function and then solve it using the Euler-Lagrangian formulation. The Lagrangian is a formulation that is used to find the maximum or minimum of any function when there is a given constraint. In our case the maximization is of the area function and the constraint is that of the length, or the perimeter. According to the Lagrangian function If we have functions such that we needed to optimize Q such that (, , ) (, , )

1 = ( )dt 2

Possible Solution

With respect to

We define the Legrangian as

In our case the formulation is as

(, , ) = (, , ) + (, , ) 1 = ( ) + 2 + 2 2 =0 =0 =0

The solution of this formulation satisfies the Euler-Lagrange Equations

For our formulation the above equation will look like

This gives us 2|Page

THE DIDOS PROBLEM

and

1 1 + = 0 2 2 2 + 2 1 1 + + = 0 2 2 2 + 2 1 1 + = 1 2 2 + 2 2 1 1 + + = 2 2 2 + 2 2 ( 2)2 + ( 1)2 = 2

Possible Solution

If we integrate both sides we get

If we square these equations and add them we get

This as we know is the equation of a circle

RESULT Thus the function that maximizes the area for a fixed perimeter is that of a circle.

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