Question

Darren hiked 12 mi East then 16 mi South how far was Darren from his starting point?

Answer 1

Let's draw a rough figure:

Blue circle is the starting point.

We need to figure out the length (distance) of the green line shown.

We can use pythagorean theorem to solve this. Let the length (green segment) be "x", so we can write:

`\begin{gathered} x^2=12^2+16^2 \\ x^2=144+256 \\ x^2=400 \\ x=\sqrt[]{400} \\ x=20 \end{gathered}`

Darren was 20 miles from his starting point.