SOLUTION: Please help me solve this problem. When Bobby walks to school in the morning he walks 6 blocks north to pick up Carrie, then 10 blocks west to Andy'd house. From Andy's, they wa

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Question 198098: Please help me solve this problem.
When Bobby walks to school in the morning he walks 6 blocks north to pick up Carrie, then 10 blocks west to Andy'd house. From Andy's, they walk 4 block north to the school. There is also a direct path that Bobby could take from his house to school if he went alone. How many fewer blocks would he have to walk if he walked to school alone?
Answer by Earlsdon(6294) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
When he picks up his friends, Bobbie walks 20 blocks (6+10+4 = 20) to school.
The direct path he could take can be represented by the hypotenuse of a right triangle whose base is 10 blocks (from the 10 blocks west) and whose height is also 10 blocks (from the 6+4 blocks north). Using the Pythagorean theorem, you can calculate the length of the direct path (c = hypotenuse) that Bobbie could take.

Take the square root of both sides.

So if Bobbie took the direct path to school, he would walk about 14 blocks and this would be 6 fewer blocks (20-14 = 6) than if he took the longer path.