Question

A youth group is setting up camp. Rain is predicted, so the campers decide to build a fly, or rain cover, over their tent. The fly will be 12 feet high and 16 feet wide. The scouts are building the frame for the fly with two poles slanted and joined together at the top of the tent. The minimum length of the slanted poles needed to support the fly is feet. NextReset

Answer 1

We can model the rain cover as an isosceles triangle shown in the diagram below. 

We use half of the isosceles triangle, shown in the second diagram, to work out the length of the pole

By Pythagoras theorem
Pole Length = $\sqrt{12^{2}+ 8^{2} }=14.4$ to one decimal place