Question

Two planes depart from the same airport at the same time. One hour later one of the planes is 480 miles due north of the airport and the other plane is 550 miles due east of the airport. At that time, what is the distance between the two planes?

Answer 1

Use the Pythagorean Theorem to find the diagonal route that connects them.

a^2 + b^2 = c^2

Answer 2

Using the pythagorean theorem, x^2 =480^2+550^2 x^2 =230400+302500 x^2 =532900 x = square root of 532900 x = 730miles