Question

Sarah is scuba diving. She starts at a depth of 37 Feet below the waters surface, descends 11 feet ascends 7 feet ascends 5 more feet and then descends 20 feet. write and expression to find her final depth.what is Sarah's final debt?Sarah is _______ feet ________ (above/below) the water's surface.

Answer 1

Sarah is 56 feet below the water's surface

Here, we are interested in getting Sarah's final depth

We proceed as follows;

We need to understand that a depth below the water stands as a negative value. When she ascends, we have a positive value change. When she descends, we have a negative value change

Hence we have;

-37 initially

-11 (descend)

+7 (ascend)

+5 (more ascending)

-20 (final descending)

We add up all these values arithmetically to arrive at the final depth

Mathematically, we have this as;

`-37-11+7+5-20\text{ = -56}`

As we can see, we have a negative value which indicates a depth below water