Question

Namita walks 14 metres towards the west, then turns to her right and walks 14 metres and then turns to her left and walks 10 metres. Again turning to her left she walks 14 metres. What is the shortest distance (in metres) between her starting point and the present position?
A. 10
B. 24
C. 28
D. 38

Answer 1

Hint: Just face the wall and consider your right hand as west, left hand as east, head as north and legs as south for a clear picture about directions. Picture the question on a paper to find the answer easily.

Complete step-by-step answer:
We are given that Namita walks 14 metres towards west and then 14 metres to her right and then 10 metres to her left and then 14 metres to her left. We have to find the shortest distance from her starting point to her present point.
Let us say the starting point of Namita is ‘x’.

And then she turns to the west and walks 14 metres to reach point a.

And then she turns to her right and walks 14 metres to reach point b.

And then she turns to her left and walks for 10 metres to reach point c.

And then she again turns to her left and walks 14 metres to reach point y.

Finally, she reaches her present point y.
Distance Namita travelled
  $
   = 14 + 14 + 10 + 14 \\
   = 52metres \\
  $
To reach from point x to point y Namita travelled 52 metres.
The shortest distance from point x to point y is distance from $ x \to a $ plus distance from $ a \to y $

As we can see in the above diagram, distance from point x to a is 14metres and distance from point a to y is 10 metres.
Therefore, shortest distance from point x to y is
  $
   = 14 + 10 \\
   = 24metres \\
  $
So, the correct answer is “Option B”.

Note: East and west are the right angles to north and south, with east is clockwise from north and west is opposite to east, north is opposite to south. One must be very clear about the directions to draw the figure.