SOLUTION: Please help with this word problem. 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 collision de

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Question 175607: Please help with this word problem.
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 collision 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?
Answer by Mathtut(3670) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
You need to 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 highlight%28b=40%29meters