death valley has an elevation of -282 feet reative to

Question

death valley has an elevation of -282 feet relative to sea level. explain how to use absolute value to describe the elevation of death valley as a positive integer 

Answer 1

Hi Angela--think of absolute value as steps on a number line. No matter which way you travel, you're still  covering distance. For example, if you go from 0 to -4, you still had to take 4 steps.

 

So in the question above, even though death valley is at -282 feet in relation to sea level, it's 282 feet away in distance. So even though the distance is in a different/negative direction, it's still an ACTUAL distance, and we call that absolute value.

 

So you can say, "death valley's distance from sea level has an absolute value of 282 feet."

 

you may be walking down hill, but you're still walking! :-)

 

hope this helps!

 

Matt