Question

Bob needs to make a canvas sun shade that covers half of the pool. One side of the pool is 31.22 feet and the other side is 25 feet. How long will the diagonal side (hypotenuse) of the shade be ?

Answer 1

To find the diagonal of the pool, you need to use The Pythagorean Theorem which is a^2 + b^2 = c^2. We need to find c, so we substitute in the sides, and it doesn't matter how we substitute because we are adding positive numbers so the answer will always be the same. So, 31.22^2 + 25^2 = c^2. After we calculate this out we get c^2. To find the diagonal or c, we square root c^2 to get a final answer of 39.9961 or 40 feet