In a football drill, ron is standing 30 yards directly east of john, and bill is standing 40 yards directly north of john. if the football is thrown from ron to bill and then from bill to john, how many yards did the footboard travel?

So essentially these people have made a right triangle. The hypotenuse is going to be the distance from Bill to Ron.

Let's abbreviate B for Bill, J for John, and R for Ron.

J -> R = 30 yds
J -> B = 40 yds

These two lengths are the legs of the right triangle.

B -> R = hypotenuse of the right triangle.

Let's find the distance from B to R using the Pythagorean Theorem:







We now know that the hypotenuse is 50 yds.

The question wants to know the distance from R -> B (50 yds) and B -> J (40 yds). Let's add those together to get the total distance the football traveled:



The football traveled 90 yds total.