At lunch, Sam eats three times as many pizza slices as Sarah and he also eats 2 brownies. He eats 8 items in total. The equation 3x+2=8 describes this situation. What does the variable x represent?

"curse these trig-loving pirates! " devora mutters as she looks at the map. then, after thinking for a moment, she walks back to the entrance of the secret cave, measuring 48 meters along the way. after performing a calculation, devora walks back to the empty treasure, faces the entrance, and turns a certain number of degrees to her left before walking 89 meters to the treasure. supposing that the angle at the cave entrance is acute and that devora's calculations were correct, how many degrees did she turn?