[identity profile] mrmorse.livejournal.com 2014-05-03 03:31 am (UTC)(link)
I didn't think about the interpretation of the other root, just that it was obviously less than 1 so not correct for this problem. Your reading makes a lot of sense.

When I got this solution, I poked at it with trig identities. You can write it in other forms, but I didn't find any which are obviously better.