Matt runs away from Ashley. Matt runs 40 m north and 30 m west. What is the minimum distance Ashley must run to catch Matt? Draw the image and label the vectors and scalars.

Answer 1

Matt runs along two sides of a right angle triangle. If Ashley runs along the third side, this is the miniumum distance between Matt's initial and final points.

Her distance is, using the Pythagorean theorem,

(30^2 + 40^2)^0.5