Question

You're locked out of your house and the only open window is on the second floor, 26 feet above the ground. you need to borrow a ladder from one of your neighbors. there's a rose garden along the edge of the house, so you'll have to place the ladder 9 feet from the house. what length of ladder do you need to reach the window?

Answer 1

You would need a ladder length of 28 feet. If you compute the hypotenuse of a right triangle, or 26 feet squared plus 9 feet squared, you get an answer of 757, the square root of which is 27.51 feet, to give yourself enough ladder, we round that number up to 28 feet.