Skip to main content
OlympiadHQ

Browse · MATH

Print

jmc

algebra senior

Problem

Tina the tourist goes on a trip. She starts at the origin and drives north (in the positive direction) for units. Then she turns east (the positive direction) and as she's turning her camera flies out the window and lands exactly at . She then drives units east, turns and drives units north. She continues this pattern of turning and driving one unit less than after the previous turn, until stopping after driving unit east. She reaches for her camera only to find it missing! She activates the GPS homing device on her camera and drives back to it in a straight line. What is the equation of this line? Express your answer as , where , , and are integers, , and is as small as possible.
Solution
We know one point on the line: the camera is at . To find another point on the line we can determine where Tina was when she noticed her camera was missing. She travels a total of units north from the origin, so her ending -coordinate is . She travels units east, so her ending -coordinate is . So we must find the equation of the line through and . The slope of the line is . We can use point-slope form to find that the equation of the line is , or . Simplifying this gives , so in the form requested, .
Final answer
4x-5y=-50