document.write( "Question 51250: Driving down a mountain, Tom finds that he has descended 1800 ft in elevation by the time he is 3.25 mi horizontally away from the top of the mountain. Find the slope of his descent to the nearest hundredth.\r
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document.write( "I thought that the first step would be to create an equation
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document.write( "y= 3.25x + 1800\r
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document.write( "But I need to find the slope, which requires 2 points (y2-y1 over x2-x1).
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document.write( "I am not sure what formula I shoudl start with to arrive at the slope, as requested.
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Algebra.Com's Answer #34180 by Earlsdon(6294) ![]() You can put this solution on YOUR website! I know this is algebra and it seems like everything in algebra requires an equation of some sort. But sometimes, a little common sense will get the job done with a lot less confusion. \n" ); document.write( "Try this. \n" ); document.write( "The definition of slope is \"rise over run\". \n" ); document.write( "In your problem, you could say Tom \"rose\" (in reverse) 1800 feet while he \"ran\" (horizontally) 3.25 miles. \n" ); document.write( "So the slope here is Rise/Run = 1800 ft./3.25 miles. \n" ); document.write( "But you'll need to change the units so that they are the same, either all in feet or all in miles. All in feet seems to be the better approach, so how many feet are there in 3.25 miles? \n" ); document.write( "Well, 1 mile = 5280 ft. Multiply both sides by 3.25 \n" ); document.write( "3.25 mies = 3.25(5280) ft. \n" ); document.write( "3.25 miles = 17160 ft. Now we can calculate the slope: \n" ); document.write( " \n" ); document.write( "\n" ); document.write( "The slope is 0.10 \n" ); document.write( " |