Question

Sonia is walking 2.5 miles home from school. She leaves at 4:00pm and gets home at 4:45pm. Graph the line that represents Sonias distance from school at a given time. Find and interpret the slope of the line

Answer 1

We know that

• The distance walked is 2.5 miles.

,

• She left at 4:00 pm and got home at 4:45 pm. She took 45 minutes to get there.

We can interpret the information as two points, the first one is (0,0) that represents the starting point. The second point is (45, 2.5), which represents the ending point when she arrived home. Let's graph these points and draw a line through them.

To find the slope, divide 2.5 miles by 45 minutes, that way we'll get the constant rate of change, which is the slope.

$\begin{gathered} m=\frac{2.5mi}{45\min } \\ m=\frac{1}{18}\cdot\frac{mi}{\min } \end{gathered}$

Therefore, the slope is 1/18 mi/min, which means Sonia walks at a rate of 1 mile every 18 minutes.