Driving down a mountain, Tom finds that he has descended 1800 ft in elevation by the time he is 3.25 miles hor

Question

please someone help don't understand

Driving down a mountain, Tom finds that he has descended 1800 ft in elevation by the time he is 3.25 miles horizontally away from the top of the mountain. Find the slope of his descent to the nearest hundredth.

Answer 1

10.5% or .105
(1800 /17,160 = .105) Not much of a mountain.

Answer 2

The only question here is whether the 3.25 miles is the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle or the horizontal leg. If it is the hypotenuse then you will need to calculate the length of the horizontal leg before figuring the rise over run.

Answer 3

One way to figure this out is to draw a picture - its a simple triangle.

The height is 1800 feet (the vertical leg of the triangle).
The distance horizontally is 3.25 miles (the horizontal leg of the triangle).

The slope is defined as "rise divided by run".
In this case, the "rise" is 1800 feet and the "run" is 3.25 miles.
If you convert the miles to feet it will be easier to calculate (its simple division).

Answer 4

slope = vertical change/horizontal change
=1800ft/3.25 miles

convert miles to feet (5280 feet per mile):

slope=1800ft/17160ft=0.1049