The number of hours of daylight, , in Hartsville can be modeled by
, where
is the number of days after March
. The day with the greatest number of hours of daylight has how many more daylight hours than May
? (March and May have
days each. April and June have
days each.)
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The correct answer is A.
To determine how many more daylight hours the day with the greatest number of hours of daylight has than May , find the maximum number of daylight hours possible for any day and then subtract from that the number of daylight hours for May
.
To find the greatest number of daylight hours possible for any day, notice that the expression is maximized when
, which corresponds to
, so
. However, for this problem,
must be a whole number, as it represents a count of days after March
. From the shape of the graph of the sine function, either
or
corresponds to the day with the greatest number of hours of daylight, and since
, the expression
is maximized when
days after March
. (It is not required to find the day on which the greatest number of hours of daylight occurs, but it is
days after March
,that is, June
.)
Since May is
days after March
, the number of hours of daylight for May
is
.
Therefore, the day with the greatest number of hours of daylight has more daylight hours than May
.