document.write( "Question 101378: An airplane covered 15 miles of its route while decreasing its altitude by 22,000 feet. Find the slope of the airplane's line of descent. Round to the nearest hundredth. [Hint: 1 mi = 5280 feet.] \n" ); document.write( "

Algebra.Com's Answer #73882 by doukungfoo(195) $\"\"$ $\"About$

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When talking about the slope of a line we need to keep in mind that we are talking about $\"rise%2Frun\"$ . Rise is vertical movement, or when graphing a line it is movement on the y axis. Run is horizontal movement or again when graphing a line it is movement on the x axis.
\n" ); document.write( "The problem tells us the airplane covered 15 miles of its route while decreasing its altitude by 22,000 feet.
\n" ); document.write( "Ok so which is the rise and which is the run.
\n" ); document.write( "Well we know that altitude is a vertical measurement so this is a pretty good indication that the rise is 22,000 ft. So by default that would make 15 miles the run, and it makes sense because run is horizontal movement.
\n" ); document.write( "So the slope for the airplane's line of descent is:
\n" ); document.write( " $\"%2822000ft%29%2F%2815miles%29\"$
\n" ); document.write( "But hold up a sec. We can't have two different units of measurement in our slope. We need to convert miles to feet and then reduce completely.
\n" ); document.write( "so we are given 1 mi = 5280 ft
\n" ); document.write( "just multiply 15*5280 = 79200
\n" ); document.write( "so now we have
\n" ); document.write( " $\"22000ft%2F79200ft\"$
\n" ); document.write( "and when we reduce this to lowest terms we get slope of
\n" ); document.write( " $\"5%2F18\"$ \r
\n" ); document.write( "\n" ); document.write( "thats it \n" ); document.write( "

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