Thread: Slope of a Line

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.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by askmemath

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.

Thank you.

The slope is:

,

where is the decent and is the horizontal distance corresponding to the decent (both measured in the same units). Note we are not worrying about the sign of the slope in this case.

Now 1 mile is 5280 ft so:

,

or about 1 in 19.

RonL