The ladder, wall and floor together form a right triangle with the length of the ladder being the hypotenuse, the distance of the foot of the ladder from the wall being one of the shorter sides and the distance between the top of the ladder and the floor being the other side
We can use the Pythagorean theorem to solve for the hypotenuse given the two sides
The general formula is:
where c is the hypotenuse and a and b the other two sides
Since Christi earns $21 per hour, to find how much she earns by working 19 hours per week we need to multiply the hourly wage by the number of hours she works in a week: