Question

You start driving north for 32 miles, turn right, and drive east for another 24 miles.

Answer 1

Answer:

  40 miles

Step-by-step explanation:

You can recognize the right triangle as a 3-4-5 right triangle with a scale factor of 8. So the length of the hypotenuse is 8·5 = 40 miles.

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Or, you can use the Pythagorean Theorem, which tells you that the sum of the squares of the leg distances will equal the square of the straight-line (hypotenuse) distance:

  32² + 24² = h²

  1024 +576 = h² = 1600

  h = √1600 = 40 . . . . miles