Question

what do you do in the following problem... "Adam, a suburb dweller, decides to have a garden in the backyard. It is a rectangle with a length of 24 feet and a width of 14 feet. He wants to divide the Garden in half along the diagonal. How many feet of fence does he need?"

Answer 1

The opposite sides of a rectangle are equal. The diagram of the triangular garden is shown below:

The diagonal divides the garden into two equal parts. We would determine the length of the diagonal, d. We would apply pythagoras theorem which is expressed as

hypotenuse^2 = opposite side^2 + adjacent side^2

$\begin{gathered} d^2=24^2+14^2 \\ d^2=576\text{ + 196 = 772} \\ d\text{ = }\sqrt[]{772\text{ }} \\ d\text{ = 27.79} \end{gathered}$

27.79 feet of fence is needed