Suppose that a beetle walks up a tree along a straight line at a constant speed of 1 meter per hour.What distance will the beetle have covered after 1 hour, 2 hours, and 3 hours?

Question

Suppose that a beetle walks up a tree along a straight line at a constant speed of 1 meter per hour.What distance will the beetle have covered after 1 hour, 2 hours, and 3 hours? Write an equation that expresses the distance (in meters) as a function of the time (in hours), and show that this function is a polynomial of degree 1.

Answer 1

Just remember functions are represented as f(x) in place of y. The letter inside the parenthesis represents the independent variable that drives the function. We have a function based on time, so we have (t) instead of (x).

we are using the distance formula d=r(t) to determine the solution based on time. But we want to write it as a function of time. And we know the rate is 1meter per hr. So the function would look like this.

f(t)= 1meter/hr(t)

then just plug in the times to determine the distances traveled.

1hr= 1 meter

2hr= 2 meters

3hr= 3 meters