SOLUTION: If two planes leave the same airport at 1:00 PM, how many miles apart will they be at 3:00 PM if one travels directly north at 150 mph and the other travels directly west at 200 mp

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Question 203559: If two planes leave the same airport at 1:00 PM, how many miles apart will they be at 3:00 PM if one travels directly north at 150 mph and the other travels directly west at 200 mph?
Found 2 solutions by Earlsdon, promotion analysis:
Answer by Earlsdon(6294) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
The two lines of travel can be represented by the two legs of a right triangle.
Let's find the distance each plane will travel between 1:00pm and 3:00 pm.
This is 2 hours of travel, so the plane traveling north at 150 mph will have gone 300 miles in 2 hours (150mph X 2hrs = 300 mi.) while the plane traveling westward will have gone 400 miles in 2 hours (200mph X 2hrs = 400 mi.)
Their distance apart after 2 hours can be represented by the hypotenuse (c) of the right triangle and this distance can be found using the Pythagorean theorem: .

Take the square root of both sides.

The two planes will be 500 miles apart at 3:00pm

Answer by promotion analysis(5) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
They set off at 1pm and we are looking at how far apart they are at 3pm - ie 2 hours later.
In two hours, the first plane will have gone due north a distance of 2 X 150 = 300 miles.
The second plane will have gone due west a distance of 2 X 200 = 400 miles.
We now have a nice right angle triangle in which the length of one side is 300 and the length of the other side is 400 - And we are looking for the distance across the hypotenuse.
Pythagoras helps us out here. The square of the distance between the planes = 300^2 + 400^2
Actually, this forms a neat pythagorean triangle - the distance between the planes is 500 miles.