How do you find the distance on a complex plane from 5-12i to the origin?

1 Answer
Dec 29, 2015

Calculate its module.

Explanation:

absz = sqrt(x^2 + y^2) with x = Re(z) and y = Im(z) is the distance of z to the origin (think of absz as abs(z - 0)).

So the distance from 5-12i to the origin is abs(5-12i) = sqrt(5^2 + (-12)^2) = sqrt(25 + 144) = sqrt(169)