<p>A ship leaves its home port expecting to travel to a port 500 km due south. Before it can move, a severe storm comes up and blows the ship 100 km due east how far is the ship from its destination? In what direction must the ship travel to reach its destination?</p>
<p>Think of it on a graph. (distance formula)</p>
<p>I need to know the degree. When I made the graph I got about 79 degree. I do not know if it is correct of what it is relative to.</p>
<p>You have a 90 degree angle at the origin. One leg is 100 km, the other is -500 km. You can figure out the rest with basic trig.</p>
<p>I understand what you are saying. Which angle should I solve for? I have to know the magnitude and the angle.</p>
<p>The angle the ship must travel to reach its target.</p>
<p>What is that angle relative to?</p>
<p>Imagine that the ship's position right after the storm, that is, (100,0), is the new starting point (aka, the new origin...0,0). Knowing that it must travel 100 km west and 500 km south, find the angle its path makes with the positive x-axis.</p>
<p>I still have a hard time doing this problem.</p>
<p>What level of math have you taken up to? It sounds like you haven't done trigonometry yet.</p>
<p>The shortest distance it takes the ship to reach it's destination is the hypotenuse of a right triangle with legs of length 100 and 500. The answer is just sqrt(250000+10000). For the angle you want the angle between the 100km leg and the hypotenuse, so it's just arctan(500/100) southeast for the angle</p>
<p>Thank you very much!!!</p>
<p>Is that just a right triangle problem?</p>