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Mary's house is four blocks west and one block south of the Center of the town. Her school is three blocks east and two blocks north of the center of the town. What is the direct distance from Mary's house to her school? Hint: the center of the town should be the origin, and North is up.
A. 10 blocks
B. 7.1 blocks
C. 4.5 blocks
D. 7.6 blocks

Sagot :

Answer:

D) 7.6 blocks

Step-by-step explanation:

Interpreting the Problem

The problem asks to find the distance between Mary's school and home in relation to the center of town or the origin.

The word "origin" hints at using a coordinate plane for the word problem.

Let,

  • each block represent 1 unit on the coordinate plane,
  • directions North and East be positive,
  • directions South and West be negative,
  • directions East and West be along the x-axis,
  • directions North and South be along the y-axis.

Following these guidelines, Mary's home and school are at (-4,-1) and (3,2) respectively.

Distance Formula

The distance between two coordinate points can be calculated using the distance formula or,

                                    [tex]\sqrt{(x_2-x_1)^2+(y_2-y_1)^2}[/tex],

where the subscripts 1 and 2 represent which coordinate pair each value originates from.

If we let [tex](x_2,y_2)[/tex] be Mary's home and [tex](x_1,y_1)[/tex] be Mary's school then, the distance between them is,

       [tex]\sqrt{(-4-3)^2+(-1-2)^2}=\sqrt{(-7)^2+(-3)^2}=\sqrt{49+9} =\sqrt{58} \\\Longrightarrow 7.6[/tex].