Last week-end a few of my friends and I decided to go on a treasure hunt. We had found a map of a buried key that opened a chest found in one of my friend’s house. We took that map and studied it in order to know where we had to go and dig for the treasure. After we localized the treasure mark, we left to search for it. When we arrived at the marked area we saw that people have built three freeways there, which did not appear on the map. This led us to the thought that whoever made the map lived before the building of the freeways.
We decided to build a campfire somewhere off the road because of the lack of electricity in the area. While sitting around the fire and analyzing the map to decide what to do next, a giant rat appeared near one of my friend’s feet, who incidentally held the map. Because of the terror he felt, he got knocked over and the treasure map went into the campfire. Before we could react in any way, the piece of paper burnt to ashes. I instantly regretted forgetting to make a photocopy of it.
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After a few moments of angst, we decided to try and draw the map from our memory. We finished drawing it and went to search the treasure. We dug in several spots we thought as correct location for the treasure mark, but could only find dirt. We camped near the fire and continued our search for a few days on end, but we never found anything else but dirt. We became demoralized and thought that we should head back home, as it seemed we would never find anything without the original map.
We spent one last night discussing about what we should do next when I came up with a brilliant idea. In order to increase our chances to find something, we could definitely use a metal detector. The others agreed almost immediately. This is when two of us left to go to my house and take a metal detector. We returned to the campsite and started scanning the ground with the device.
We ran it directly at the ground several times, but it did not manage to pick up anything in about thirty meters. After some more tries, one of my friends knocked it a bit, after which we measured thirty degrees with a protractor. As it turns out it got stuck and when my friend knocked it, it showed that it had found metal about fifteen feet from it. Although we had searched for the treasure uselessly before, we became pretty excited that we got so close to actually finding it.
Even though the metal detector told us that it found metal fifteen feet away from us, we did not know exactly the location of the treasure in the area. This is when my friend came with the idea of using the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the exact location of the detected metal. Using this theorem we presumed that the scanned area could represent a triangle and that its largest side measured fifteen feet. This way, we determined the fact that from the spot we sat on to the spot where we could find the buried treasure we needed to measure nine feet. Logically, the other side of the theoretical triangle had twelve feet and it represented the distance from the surface of the earth until the treasure. We found ourselves very close to the treasure and this feeling gave us hope. We finally felt that we did not come there for uselessly and that we would find the treasure soon.
We moved towards the zone we calculated, which meant nine feet away from where we sat. When we reached the pointed area, we started digging because we had a certain thought that we would find the treasure buried twelve feet deep. After about thirty minutes of digging, we found a small box. Without opening it, we started cheering and hugging each other. Our happiness could not express itself in words. After a few minutes of sheer contentment, we remembered that we had discovered the treasured and turned back to the box. I opened it enthusiastically to find small rusty key inside it.