Megan bikes west to get from her apartment to school after school she bikes 8 miles north to her friends house how far is megans apartment from her friends house, measured in a straight line

The complete question: Megan bikes 6 miles west to get from her apartment to school. After school, she bikes 8 miles north to her friend's house. How far is Megan's apartment from her friend's house, measured in a straight line?

So,Megan's apartment, the school, and Megan's friend's house form a right triangle with legs 6 miles and 8 miles as you can see in the attached picture; the hypotenuse of the right triangle is the straight distance is from Megan's apartment to her friend's house. To find that distance we are going to use the Pythagorean theorem:





We can conclude that distance between Megan's apartment and her friend's house is 10 miles.