Question

Lindsey is fishing from a small boat her fishing hook is 12 m below her, and a fish is swimming at the same depth as the hook, 16 m away. how far is lindsey from the fish

Answer 1

Lindsey is 20 m away from the fish.

Explanation:

To solve this, I first drew it out. Lindsey is in a boat and her hook is a vertical line below her. Label this line 12m since the hook is 12 m below her.

Next, go from the hook and draw a horizontal line to the fish. Label this line 16m since that's how far the fish is from the hook.

Now, create a dashed diagonal line from Lindsey to the fish, this is the distance we want to find.

Notice that we've created a triangle and that the dashed line is the hypotenuse. A hypotenuse is the side of a triangle that is opposite to a 90 degree angle in a right triangle. To find the length of a hypotenuse we can use the Pythagorean theorem.

`a^2+b^2=c^2`

a and b are the lengths of the two sides of the triangle that are not the hypotenuse, so:

`(12)^2+16^2=c^2\\144+256=c^2\\400=c^2\\√(400) =√(c^2) \\20=c`

the length of the dashed line between Lindsey and the fish is 20m, so Lindsey is 20m away from the fish.