Question

A hot air balloon travels 18 kilometers west and then travels 50 kilometers east. What is the current position of the hot air balloon?

Answer 1

32 km east

Step-by-step explanation:

In order to find the final position of the balloon, we need to calculate its total displacement.

We have:

- Displacement towards west: 18 km

- Displacement towards east: 50 km

The two vectors are on the same line: this means that we can simply add them together (taking into account the proper direction) to obtain the total displacement.

Taking east as positive direction and west as negative direction, we have:

`d = 50 + (-18) = 50 - 18 = 32 km`

And since it is positive, it means that the final position of the balloon is 32 km east from its initial position.