Question

A hiker walks 12 miles due north. Then he turns and walks 16 miles due east. At this point, how many miles is the hiker from his starting point?

Answer 1

`20` miles

Explanation:

Assuming the land is flat and the hiker is not close to one of the poles, he has traversed the two shorter sides of a right angled triangle, so we can use Pythagoras theorem to deduce the length of the hypotenuse:

`sqrt(12^2+16^2) = sqrt(144+256) = sqrt(400) = 20`

This is a `3,4,5` triangle scaled up by a factor of `4` miles.