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CARTOGRAPHY
Problem
The outline of the state of Delaware is approximated by the polygon with
vertices, given in consecutive order, in the file delaware.data.
The scale here is 1 map unit = ?? miles. Our goal is to determine the length
of the border, the geographical center, and the area of the state of
Delaware.
- Using Maple's
polygonplot command draw the outline of the state
of Delaware.
- Find the length (in miles) of the border of state of Delaware.
- Using Green's theorem, one may show that the region in the x,y
plane bounded by the simple closed curve

has area

Using this find the formula for the area of a polygon with vertices
(in consecutive order)
.
- Using the formula obtained above compute the area of Delaware in
square miles.
- Let D be a region enclosed by the simple closed curve C
x=x(t), y=y(t),
. We know that its centroid
is given by

So to obtain the centroid of a polygonal region we need a clever way to
compute
and
.
Using Green's Theorem convert these integrals to an integral over the
boundary C of the region.
- Using the above result, compute the centroid of the polygonal region
in (3).
- Using Maple compute the geographical center of Delaware
Suggestions
- You will need to learn how to read data from a file from within Maple.
- For (3) and (6), first calculate the integrals over a line segment
joining the points
to
.
Rakesh
Wed Aug 20 14:46:40 EDT 1997