You and your cousin are walking through the lunchroom when you both trip. Your trays hit the ground and both lunches fly through the air in parabolic paths until they hit your friend on the top of the head. If your lunches had not landed on your friend’s head, then your hamburger would have landed on the floor 12 feet away and your cousin’s chili would have landed 16 feet away. Your hamburger reaches a height of 13 feet and your cousin’s chili reaches a height of 6 feet. How tall is your friend? Explain.

Ok here we go ..there are plenty of ways to solve such math problems but we will go for the smartest and easiest ..5x+2y=7  -2x+6y=9we rearrange them into the following ..by multiplying the 1st equation by 2 it becomes 10x + 4y = 14we rearrange it and so it becomes 10x = 14 - 4yas for the second equation we multiply it by 5 and rearrange it so it becomes as to the following ..-10x + 30y = 45rearranging so 10x = 30y -45now 10x equals both 14 - 4y and 30y -45so   14 - 4y = 30y -4531 = 26yy= 31/26 = 1.19 or around 1.2so by now we can calculate x easily as  -2x+6y=9so 2x = 6y -9 = 6 * 31/26 - 9 = -1.84  then x = - 0.92 or around -0.9best luck!

Distance is always positive