John drove his car due east for 8 miles. He then turned south and drove 15 miles. How far was he from where he started?

John was 17 miles away from where he started.

Step-by-step explanation:

The easiest approach to this problem is to draw it out (check the attached image). Going East and turning South is the same as drawing a line towards the right, and then down on the paper.

Using the Pythagorean Theorem, we know that the sum of the square of the legs (2 smallest sides of a right triangle) is equal to the square of the hypotenuse of that triangle. In other words, .

So to solve this, work backwards:

the 2 figures are congruent bc if you reflect abcd over the y axis then over the d axis the figures overlap