Question

Three people are sitting on a bus. Belle is directly behind Tamir and directly left of Antonio. If Tamir and Belle are 4 meters apart, and Antonio and Tamir are 5 meters apart, what is the distance between Belle and Antonio?

Answer 1

To answer this question, we have to carefully draw a sketch of the situation as follows:

In this graph, we have a right triangle, and we can use the Pythagorean Theorem to find the value for side x. Then, we can proceed as follows to find the value of x.

$5^2=4^2+x^2\Rightarrow x^2=5^2-4^2\Rightarrow x=\sqrt[]{5^2-4^2}\Rightarrow x=\sqrt[]{25-16}\Rightarrow x=\sqrt[]{9}$

Therefore, x is:

$x=\sqrt[]{9}\Rightarrow x=3$

Hence, the distance between Belle and Antonio is 3 meters.