How far away and which direction is hiker relative to the base camp?

ilze

New member
A hiker begins the first leg of a trail by walking a distance of 30 km in a southeasterly direction relative to his base camp. The hiker then walks the second leg of his trail a distance of 50 km in a direction 60o north of east.
 
This is a vector problem, draw the movements to scale on a piece of paper and with a rule, protractor and pencil you will have an extremely close to correct answer. This can then be used to verify the calculated answer that you come up with. By converting the points of origin, first turn point and last point from polar to rectangular and then back you will come up with a distance and direction from home! I do not have the relevant calculator these days to be able to help more. Some links below that i just looked up should help you, wish this technology was available when i was at school. PS I know i have not given the answer, however i think this will help you more than just answering the question for you. I forgot to mention that when you have the two individual movements in rectangular form you then add them together before you convert back to polar form for the answer that you seek.
Edit: New edit pending, i'm not happy with my last solution.
 
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