SOLUTION: You and your pigeon start from home and drive north 30 miles then east 45 miles. Your pigeon decides to fly home. What is shortest distance he can fly?

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Question 148623: You and your pigeon start from home and drive north 30 miles then east 45 miles. Your pigeon decides to fly home. What is shortest distance he can fly?

Found 2 solutions by stanbon, vleith:
Answer by stanbon(75887) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
You and your pigeon start from home and drive north 30 miles then east 45 miles. Your pigeon decides to fly home. What is shortest distance he can fly?
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Pythagoras says the distance = sqrt(30^2 + 45^2) = 54.08... miles
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Cheers,
Stan H.

Answer by vleith(2983) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
If you draw where you have driven so far, north 30 miles then east 45 miles and then draw a line from where you stopped back to the point you started, you'll see that you have drawn a right triangle. The two 'short sides' are 30 and 45.
The shortest distance 'home' is the third leg (the hypotenuse) of the right triangle. How are the lengths of those three legs related mathematically? Pythagorean theorem!

You've been given a= 30 and b=45. Just plug in the values and take the square root of their sums.