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
To work out who the unknowns in the room are, we can establish that c = p+ 9
c + p = 25. The unknowns in the room are there the total number of
parents in the room, and the total number of teachers in the room.