Brain Teaser - Minimum distance between two curves

[CR Haeger]

(11-18-2015 10:19 PM)Werner Wrote:  xf = 0.331694745644, xg = 0.568071280353, distance = 0.427592353667

Just defining the normals and forcing them to be equal for both curves.
You get a 5-th degree polynomial that I solved numerically..

Cheers, Werner

Good job Werner - that's what I came up with!

I used HP Prime fsolve() with two equations (normal slopes, normal intercepts) and two unknowns (xf, xg).

   

Using the Primes SKETCH feature was interesting at first to guess/eyeball the proper normal line.