Question

#8 - A roller coaster takes riders up a 90 meter hill, then drops them 74 meters down and takes them back up a 30 meter hill followed by a 46 meter drop. What is the roller coasters elevation after the second drop, compared to where the roller coaster begins? Write your answer as an equation, and solve.

Answer 1

Let x be the final elevation of the roller coaster.

Let us assume that the roller coaster started from ground level meaning that the elevation is 0 meter.

We will consider going up with a positive sign and going down with a negative sign.

So the equation will be

$x=90-74+30-46$

Let us solve the equation

$\begin{gathered} x=90+30-74-46_{} \\ x=120-120 \\ x=0 \end{gathered}$

Therefore, the elevation of the roller coaster is 0 meter which means that it is exactly where it started from.