Longest distance story problem

Question

Can somone explain this story problem.

If an insect flew the greatest possible straight-line distance in the room, how far would it travel? Give your answer to the nearest tenth of a foot.

 

The room is 12 feet long with a width of 9 feet and a height of 11 feet.  I think this might have something to do with right angles but I'm not sure. Can anyone help? Thanks.
 

Answer 1

Draw a cube. The longest distance is from the farthest corner on the bottom to the farthest corner on the top.

                        ..                                                                                      ..c

  a                                                                                   b              9

11

 e                                         12                                        d

Can you see the cube, looks more like a tv but whatever.

So from 'c' to 'e' is the distance you are looking for. you know that 'a' to 'b' is 12 and 'b' to 'c' is 9. plug in your triganomic formula of a^2+b^2=c^2 and then you can find the distance from 'a' to 'c'.

Then plug that in again to the same formula for points 'a' to 'c' and then 'c' to 'e' will be your product. this is kind of confusing so the answer is 18.6ft.