Pythagorean Theorem - I'm Clueless:(

J

JojoBear94

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Mar 3, 2010
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I missed a few days of class and I'm WAY behind. I'm failing with a twenty something and I have til Wednesday to bring it up. Could I get some help?

Directions: Use a table of square roots or a calculator to find each hypotenuse to the nearest thousandth.

Ex: The legs of a right triangle measure 12 cm and 21 cm. What's the measure of the hypotenuse?

I need to know how to work this problem. I also need help working it "backwards":

Ex: One leg of a right triangle measures 10 cm. The hypotenuse measures 15 cm. Whats the measure of the second leg?
 
It is important to know that the hypotenuse is always the longest side of a triangle. The pythagorean theorem is

\(\displaystyle h^2=a^2+b^2\)

where
h is your hypotenuse
a and b are the legs of the triangle.

Here is an example

if i had a leg a= 10 and the other leg is b=5

then to find the hypotenuse i would put the the information into our formula

\(\displaystyle h^2=10^2+5^2\)

if you take the square root of both sides then you get

\(\displaystyle h=\sqrt{10^2+5^2}\)

h is about 11.18

Let us know what you get and we can help some more
 
Also, if you have the hypotenuse and a leg you can still put it into the equations and solve for the missing leg
 
I've got it all now (thank goodness).

Thanks for the help. It's a college prep class *ugh*
I'm only a freshman. It's greatly appreciated :)
 
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