Question

a utility pole is 8m high. a cable is stretched from the top of the pile to a point in the ground that is 7 m from the bottom of the pole. how long is the cable? round to 2 decimal places

Answer 1

We can draw this as:

We can use the Pythagorean theorem to find the length of the cable, as it is the hypotenuse of a right triangle:

$\begin{gathered} c^2=7^2+8^2 \\ c^2=49+64 \\ c^2=113 \\ c=\sqrt[]{113} \\ c\approx10.63 \end{gathered}$

Answer: the cable length is 10.63 m.