SOLUTION: avoiding a collision: a car is traveling on a road that is perpendicular to a railroad track. when the car is 30 meters from the crossing, the car's new collison detector warns the

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Question 169352: avoiding a collision: a car is traveling on a road that is perpendicular to a railroad track. when the car is 30 meters from the crossing, the car's new collison detector warns the driver that there is a train 50 meters from the car and heading toward the same crossing. how far is the train from the crossing?
Found 2 solutions by algebrapro18, Mathtut:
Answer by algebrapro18(249) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
All you would need to do is use the pythagorean theorem. It states that for a right triangle the the length of both of the legs(a and b) squared is equal to the square of the hypotenuse(c). or in simple language a^2 + b^2 = c^2.
Now we know one of the legs is 30 meters(the distance from the car to the track). The hypotenuse is 50 meters(distance from the train to the car). Now we just need to solve for the other leg.
a^2 + b^2 = c^2
(30)^2 + b^2 = (50)^2
b^2 = (50)^2 - (30)^2 = 2500-900 = 1600 meters
now to find the leg we need to take the square root of 1600 which is 40. So your final answer is 40 meters.

Answer by Mathtut(3670) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
this is a right triangle problem so pathorean theorem states
c is the hypothenuse and is the distance the car is to the train (50 meters)
:
we will call one of the legs, lets say a, the distance the car is from the crossing (30 meters). So we are looking for b the distance the train is from the crossing

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b^2=1600
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the distance the train is from the crossing