Question

Corinne and Deanna decide to race from one corner of an open field to the other. The field is rectangular in shape, 60 meters long and 80 meters wide. Since Corinne is older and faster, she's going to run along the outside of the field, and Deanna will take the diagonal route. If Deanna can run at a rate of 5 meters per second, how fast will Corinne have to run to get there at the same time as Deanna?

Answer 1

Corinna will have to run at 7 meters per second to get there at the same time as Deanna.

Explanation:

So to find the distance of Deanna's route, you can use the Pythagorean theorem.

a^2 + b^2 = c^2

60^2 + 80^2 = 10000

c^2 = 10000

Take the square root of both sides.

c = 100

So Deanna runs 100 meters at 5 meters per second.

100/5 = 20

She runs for 20 seconds.

To find Corinne's distance, we add 60 and 80, which is 140.

To find how fast she need to run to get there in 20 seconds, you divide 140 by 20, which gets 7 (meters per second). You can also think of it like this: to run 140 meters in 20 seconds, she has to run at 140 meters per 20 seconds, which you can simplify (like a fraction) to 7/1, or just 7