Distance Between Telephone Poles

Date: 15 Apr 1995 00:10:39 -0400
From: Steven Boynes
Subject: Math Problem!

SWAT Team:

You can answer any question pertaining to mathematics????   Okay,
I'm only a High School Student so don't expect anything to
challenging.  I'm currently in Algebra II/Trigonometry Honors. 
Here's a few questions for you guys:

     1.  Do you have any challenging brain teasers???  I'd love
to get a hold of a bunch so I could rev up my brain for the SAT's.

     2.  Do you know of any GOOD graphing programs that do math
problems (e.g.-parabolas, hyperbolas, etc.)

     3.  Ok..Here's the real Math Problem:

               If you have 6 equally spaced telephone poles, and
the distance between the first and sixth telephone pole is 1260 feet,
what is the distance between the first and fourth telephone poles???

Thanks for your Help!!!  

Date: 15 Apr 1995 13:13:02 -0400
From: Dr. Ken
Subject: Re: Math Problem!

Hello there!

When I took the SAT's, I found that the best preparation was to simply 
get my hands on a bunch of old SAT tests (as long as they're not too old,
because the style of test evolves over time) and practice going through
them. You may find that the math section isn't as hard as you think it's 
going to be; a lot of points are lost simply because people don't know the 
style of the test well, or they get all nervous and anxious during the 
test and choke.  So that's what I'd recommend.

If you're interested in puzzles, check out the newsgroups rec.puzzles and
geometry.puzzles.  They're pretty good.

As for good graphing programs, there's a great program called Mathematica 
that does a whole bunch of math, including graphing functions.  If you 
have access to the World Wide Web, you can look at the site 
   http://www.math.fsu.edu/Science/Software.html    or
          http://mathforum.org/   
for other information.

Now for the math problem:
Well, let's assign the variable x to the distance between any two adjacent
poles.  Then the distance between the first and the sixth poles is 5x.  So
that gives us the equation 5x = 1260.  Once we solve for x, we can find out
the distance between the first and fourth poles by finding out what 3x is.
I hope this helps!

-Ken "Dr." Math