Question

A hummingbird's nest is 15 feet high in a tree and a flower is on the ground 8 feet away from the base of the tree. How far will the hummingbird need to fly to get from its nest to the flower?

Answer 1

The humming bird need to fly 17 feet to get from its nest to the flower

Solution:

Given that , A hummingbird's nest is 15 feet high in a tree  

And a flower is on the ground 8 feet away from the base of the tree.  

We have to find how far will the hummingbird need to fly to get from its nest to the flower?

Now , if we can observe there forms an right angle triangle, with distance between flower and nest as hypotenuse and height of tree and distance of flower as other legs.

Now, we can use pythagorean theorem

Pythagorean theorem, states that the square of the length of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of squares of the lengths of other two sides of the right-angled triangle.

By above definition, we get

$\text { (distance between nest and flower) }^{2}=\text { (height of tree) }^{2}+\text { (distance of flower from tree) }^{2}$

$\begin{array}{l}{\text { (Distance) }^{2}=152+82} \\\\ {\text { Distance }^{2}=225+64=289} \\\\ {\text { Distance }^{2}=17^2} \\\\ {\text { Distance }=17}\end{array}$

Hence, the bird has to travel 17 feet.