Driving down a mountain, Tom finds that he has descended 1800 ft
in elevation by the time he is 3.25 mi horizontally away from the top of the
mountain. Find the slope of his descent to the nearest hundredth.
slope= descent/horizontal
change 1800 feet to miles, there are 5280 feet in a mile, as I recall.
To find the slope of Tom's descent, we need to calculate the ratio of the change in elevation to the horizontal distance traveled.
First, we need to convert the change in elevation from feet to miles. Since there are 5280 feet in a mile, we can divide the change in elevation by 5280 to get the value in miles:
1800 ft / 5280 ft/mile = 0.34 miles (rounded to two decimal places)
Now, we can calculate the slope by dividing the change in elevation (in miles) by the horizontal distance traveled. In this case, the horizontal distance traveled is given as 3.25 miles:
slope = 0.34 miles / 3.25 miles = 0.1046 (rounded to four decimal places)
Therefore, the slope of Tom's descent is approximately 0.1046 or 0.10 (rounded to the nearest hundredth).