A ladder is placed against a wall. A foot of the ladder is 4 feet away from the wall and the top of the ladder touches the wall at a point 18 feet away off the ground. What is the slope of the ladder?
Answers (1)
Slope is rise over run. Speaking of a chart, run is horizontal distance left to right. Run is always positive because we always go left to right. Rise is the vertical change in that same distance. A negative rise means it drops. So the slope of your ladder is 18/4 = 9/2 which we can describe as 4 1/2 to 1. That means for every 1 unit horizontally it rises 4 1.2 units vertically. On a road over a mountain, the same thing is called "grade".