Question

A 10ft pole is to be erected and held in the ground by four wires attached at the top. The guy wires are attached to the ground at a distance of 15 ft from the base poke. What is the exact length of each guy wire? how much wire should be purchased if it cannot be purchased in franctions of foot

Answer 1

The pole, guy wire and ground forms a right angled triangle with the guy wire being the hypotenuse.
Legs = 10 ft and 15 ft.

The length of guys wire = Sqrt (10^2+15^2) = $5 \sqrt{13}$ ≈18.03 ft

A total of 4 guy wires.
Te total length required = 4*$5\sqrt{13}$ ≈ 72.11 ft.

Since wire cannot be bought in fractions of foot, the length is rounded to the next whole number. That is,

Length required = 73 ft.