Cooking Food with a Parabolic Surface

[waterninja]

I attached the picture of the problem. I'm pretty thrown off by the wording of the problem and how exactly I'm supposed to get a correct measurement. Am I supposed to set up a triangle with the given measurements? Even that seems pointless to me given how arbitrary the drawing for the problem is.

You are using a homemade solar cooker to cook your food. It measures 1.3 meters across and the base is .5 meters below the top part. To the nearest centimeter, how far away from the base does your food need to be so that it can be cooked most efficiently?

My assumption is that 'across' means a straight line from one end of the parabolic surface to the other, and the base is the halfway point?

 

[Deleted member 4993]

I attached the picture of the problem. I'm pretty thrown off by the wording of the problem and how exactly I'm supposed to get a correct measurement. Am I supposed to set up a triangle with the given measurements? Even that seems pointless to me given how arbitrary the drawing for the problem is.

You are using a homemade solar cooker to cook your food. It measures 1.3 meters across and the base is .5 meters below the top part. To the nearest centimeter, how far away from the base does your food need to be so that it can be cooked most efficiently?

My assumption is that 'across' means a straight line from one end of the parabolic surface to the other, and the base is the halfway point?

Please post the EXACT problem (verbatim) as it was presented to you.

I am assuming that in a convoluted way the question is asking you to locate the focus of the parabola.

 

[hoosie]