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.
Here what I have
-1800 divid it by 3.25*5280ft
-1800/17160
-0.105
have done some thing wrong it does not seem to look right
Checking in my head (appx)
about a third mile down per three miles horizontal
1/3*3 appx 1/9 or .11 apx. Looks right to me. Of course it is negative, as you did.
Your calculations are correct, but the negative sign indicates the direction of the descent, not the slope itself. To find the slope, you need to divide the change in elevation (-1800 ft) by the horizontal distance (3.25 mi or 3.25 * 5280 ft).
So, the correct calculation is:
Slope = change in elevation / horizontal distance
Slope = -1800 ft / (3.25 mi * 5280 ft/mi)
Slope = -1800 / (3.25 * 5280)
Slope ≈ -0.104
The negative sign represents the descent, and the slope is approximately -0.104. Therefore, the slope of Tom's descent is approximately -0.104, or about -0.11 when rounded to the nearest hundredth.