Question

Traveling from City 1 to City 2, a pilot planned a southeast course along the path labeled d. Instead, a storm forced the pilot to travel 16 miles south, then 12 miles east to reach City 2. How many extra miles was the pilot forced to fly?

Answer 1

Answer: 8 miles

Step-by-step explanation: If we drew out the problem we would get a right triangle where d is the hypotenuse and the 16 miles south and the 12 miles east would be the legs of such a triangle. Then using the Pythagorean theorem we get:

$d^2=16^2+12^2=400$

If we then take the square root of both sides we get:

$d=\sqrt{400} =20$

Then we realize that the pilot was forced to travel 8 extra miles because

$(16+12)-20=28-20=8$