Around The Horn Pow

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In this POW, we learn about different ways pilgrims immigrated to California. Some families took a ship around Cape Horn at the tip of South America. We were then told a situation where a ship left New York for San Francisco the first of every month at noon. At the same time, a ship leaves San Francisco for New York. Also, each ship arrives exactly six months after it leaves. The purpose of this POW is to figure out if we were on a ship leaving from New York, the number of ships we would meet along the way. When I first started this POW I found it very confusing, and I didn’t understand how to get started on it. I decided to re-write the important facts on my sheet of note paper. I wrote down that one ship leaves from New York and one ship leaves from San Francisco on the first of every month at 12:00 P.M. I also wrote down that each ship takes exactly six months to reach its final destination. I decided to assume that there are no problems with the weather, and that each ship travels the same distance per month. I also assumed that time zones don’t affect the problem and that my ship is the first one to go out in a very long time. I started out this POW by drawing a diagram that looked like a curve. On one end, I wrote New York and on the other end San Francisco. I assumed that there is a certain place the ship must reach at the end of each month, so I split up my diagram into 6 portions, and titled each: Port 1, Port 2, Port 3, Port 4, and Port 5. Port 6 was the final destination, so either New York or San Francisco, depending on the starting location of the ship. To understand the situation better, I used to small squares of paper and named them Ship 1 and Ship 2. I decided that Ship 1 was the Ship I was going to block. I put Ship 1 at New York and Ship 2 at San Francisco. After one metaphorical month passed, I moved Ship 1 to port 2, Ship 2 to Port 5, and fed

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