Word, problems for math

Question

Sound travels about 750 mph. If you stand in a canyon and sound a horn, you will hear an echo. Suppose it takes about 0.5 seconds to hear the echo. How far away is the canyon wall, in feet?

Answer 1

If you stand at a canyon and sound the horn, The sound would have to travel to the canyon wall and back for you to hear the echo. Therefore the 0.5 seconds of time represents the time it takes to travel twice the distance. So the time to go from where the sound was emitted to the wall would be 0.25 seconds.

So starting with that, we can then determine how far away the canyon wall is in feet.

Now we need to pay close attention to the units given. We are given the speed in miles per hour. So we will need to convert that feet per second using unit conversions.

distance = Rate X Time

distance = [(750 miles/hour) X (1 hour / 60seonds) X (5280feet/1mile)] X 0.25 seconds

distance = 16500 Feet away.