Question

As the guest was sneaking away, the grounds keeper was 4 feet(48 inches) away and pushed an 84 inch ladder onto the suspect. The very top of the ladder hit the guest in inches, then convert to feet. Suspect height= ____ft. ____ in.

Answer 1

To solve this problem, draw the situation for a better comprehension:

As we can see, the situation describes a right triangle and we can use pythagorean theorem to solve it.

To do this, use the corresponding units.

For inches:

$\begin{gathered} h=\sqrt[]{84^2-48^2} \\ h=\sqrt[]{7056-2304} \\ h=\sqrt[]{4752} \\ h=68.9 \end{gathered}$

The suspect is 68.9 inches high.

Convert this height to feet:

$68.9in\cdot(\frac{1ft}{12in})=5.74ft$

The suspect is 5.74 feet high.