Big City Police Department Constabulary Avenue Big City, PU 11235 November 6, 1992

Calculus Student Franklin & Marshall College Lancaster, PA 17604 Dear Calculus Student: Our police force has run up against a difficult problem, and we were hoping that we could turn to you for assistance. Your very gracious and upstanding professor, Dr. Crannell, to whom I am going to dedicate my life, told me that you might be able to help. Our problem is this: a clown from a local circus troupe was shot out of a cannon and into a canyon and subsequently died. We believe that it was murderin fact, we have a suspectbut we can't prove that it's not a suicide. The facts of the case are these: Bobo the clown has been performing in the Upsy-Daisy Traveling PU Circus for about 2 years. The Upsy-Daisy is centered in the mountains bordering Big City; they prefer practicing in high altitudes where the air is rarer. Bobo performs a variety of antic acts for the circus, including one in which he is fired out of a cannon and parachutes into the local canyon, Absolutely Gorges. Their next big show was to be November 8, and at the time of the accident they were in the midst of rehearsals. On the afternoon of November 1, Bobo climbed into the cannon for reasons that we are still unclear about. According to eyewitness accounts, the only living beings within close range were the owner of the circus, Rick Rasterdly, and 5 African elephants. Somehow the cannon was fired, and Bobo, who was not wearing a parachute at the time, was shot clear across the gorge, hitting the opposite wall some 310 meters down. It surprised me, to be quite frank, that Bobo could fly all the way that he did. I don't know how far it is across the canyon (measuring down was easier than measuring across), but it must be at least 200 meters. The reason I'm so surprised is that the cannon itself is not very large: when one end is on the ground, the other end is only 3 feet in the air, and from base to mouth it's only 5 feet long. Nonetheless, it can fire off something as large as a human being at a speed of 30 meters per second. Our main line of questioning has been whether Bobo fired the cannon himself or whether Rasterdly set it off instead. It only takes about a half a second to push the button. We have one eye-witness who swears that Mr. Rasterdly hit the ignition button. We have another who swears that Mr. Rasterdly kept his hands to himself. We have witnesses who swear that Rasterdly and Bobo had been arguing about money, and others who claim that they were best friends. We have witnesses who say Bobo was depressed, and others who say he never seemed happier. To tell the truth, we're getting sick of witnesses, and that's why we're turning to you. Here is Mr. Rasterdly's version of what happened: I was filming the elephants for a rock video. I figure, if MTV likes sex, violence, and raw, bestial emotion, why not use elephants, eh? Bobo geez, I still can't believe he changed his name legally it used to be Winifred Dieselblock well, he was in the cannon, probably checking things out. He often does before a gig, just to make sure everything's working okay. I didn't pay much attention because I had the elephants there; if you had to choose between 5 elephants or a clown you'd [ ] well pick the elephants, wouldn't you? So we're getting to the tricky part where they all stand up on their hind legs and put their front legs on each other, and I hear a 'boom!'. I turn around, and there's Winifred sailing off. I kept waiting for his chute to open and thinking it's a [ ] fine time for him to pull this, knowing we'll have to send the jeep down to get him; but his chute never opens and he bangs into the wall on the opposite side and then tumbles on down. I can't believe it was suicide, I just can't. It must have been an accident. He pushed that button by mistake. The video recorder confirms his story up to a point: it has no sound, but it has a digital clock which leaves an imprint on the film. Just as the elephants were rearing up (15:52:20 on the film), the camera veered and was dropped. It turns out we have one further ace up our sleeve, and we're keeping this quiet. Bobo's watch had been fixed in town that week and he'd just picked it up the morning of his death. The watchmaker told us it had kept excellent time during the week since she'd repaired it, not losing or gaining a second from her master clock. Bobo was wearing his watch when he died, and it stopped at 3:56:50. We compared the video camera to the watchmaker's clock, and found the former to be 4 minutes and 16 seconds slow. What we'd like to know from you, if you can possibly help us with this, are the following three questions: does Rasterdly's story hold water, and can we convince the jury that it doesn't? How fast was Bobo going at the time of impact, and was this sufficient to cause death (there's always the outside chance Bobo was murdered in the cannon, and then disposed of to avoid suspicion). And lastly, just to check that your calculations are correct, can you tell us how far across the gorge Bobo flew? (We'll measure this ourselves to cross-check the accuracy of your computations). I would appreciate your answer(s) by November 24, as we'll go to trial the day after.

Yours sincerely, Officer S. Kovalevskia