SOLUTION: mary travels 7 miles north and 12 miles west. what is the diagonal distance from her starting point to where she stopped?

Question 388157: mary travels 7 miles north and 12 miles west. what is the diagonal distance from her starting point to where she stopped?
Found 2 solutions by robertb, aggie_tutor:
Answer by robertb(5830) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
miles, to 2 decimal places.
Answer by aggie_tutor(13) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
This is a "right triangle" problem solved using pythagorean theorem.
The theorem is:

Where a and b are lengths of the two shorter sides of a right triangle, and c is the length of that triangle's longest side.
We know this is a right triangle because the problem statement says so. The only shape that going north (think going up the Y axis of a chart) followed by going west (think going down the X axis in the negative direction) could be is a right triangle, and the two distances mark the two shorter sides of the triangle:
g<------12------^
|
|
7
|
h
So if the trip starts at h and ends at g, the length of g->h is the longest side of this triangle, i.e. c.
a = 7
b = 12

which is about 13.89 miles.

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