by Kate Dalby
Many students sitting for TJ’s SIS (student information sheet) on 
February 20th, 2016, were throw a curve ball when they read the “ethical essay” question. It wasn’t an essay prompt as they expected, but rather a math question.
My understanding, from speaking to several of my students, was that they were given 30 minutes to solve a question and explain the logic of their answer. The question went something like this:
It’s 5:30 AM, and as a helicopter pilot you’ve just been told there’s an injured man on a boat you need to get to a hospital. The boat is going towards where you are at 10 mph, but is currently 400 miles away. You need to get him as soon as possible, but you only have 6600 lbs of fuel in your helicopter, which burns 1200 lbs per hour, and always travels at 150 mph. Also, you need to account for 30 min of fuel spent hovering over the boat to get the man into the helicopter, and 1 extra hour of fuel due to helicopter standards. Therefore, when can you depart your station to get the man as soon as possible.
So the first step for me was figuring out how many hours of flight time the pilot had. The limitation was fuel, so I took 6600 lbs. of fuel and divided by 1200 lbs. (the amount of fuel needed per hour). The amount I got was 5.5 hours of flight time.
I subtracted 1.5 hours for the mandatory extra hour of fuel and the 30 minutes of hover time to retrieve the patient. That gave me a net 4 hours of flight time or a 600 miles trip. I then cut the 600 in half since I have to get the pilot to the pick-up point AND back. That meant the pilot could only fly 300 miles and the boat would have to make up the 100 mile short fall. It takes the boat 10 hours to travel to the pick-up point. The boat leaves at 5:30am and arrives at the pick up point at 3:30pm.
To get to the pick up point at 3:30pm the pilot, who flies 300 miles in two hours, must leave at 1:30pm to meet the boat and injured man at 3:30pm. So the answer to the question: 1:30pm is the time the pilot must leave.
Hopefully most of the students reading this were comfortable with the question. It could have been worse; at least the computers were working this time.
Here is a video explanation of TJ’s SIS math question on Feb 20th.
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