Question

A pet turtle walks towards his food dish at a constant speed in a straight line. His distance in inches, y, from his food dish after a seconds is given by y= 30 +12. In the equation y = 3x + 12, interpret the meaning of the coefficient 3 and the meaning of the number 12.

Answer 1

As we can see, the movement of the Pet turtle has been modled by the equation of straight line graph;

`y\text{ = mx + b}`

m represents the slope and b represents the y-intercept

As seen from the equation given; 3 is the slope, while 12 represents the y-intercept

The slope represent the constant speed at which the Turtle was later moving and this is 3 inches per second

Secondly, we have the value 12; this is the y-intercept and it is the distance the Pet turtle was from the dish before starting to move at the given constant speed