Question

A slide is 21 feet long. To get to the top of the slide, you use a vertical 9-foot high rung ladder. What is the distance, b, from the bottom of the slide to the bottom of the stairs? Round your answer to the nearest tenth.

Answer 1

Its a right angled triangle. You have C and have B all you need to find is A. usually for a question like this you would use the Pythagorean theorem which is A2+B2=C2 but since we already have c we will use C2-B2=A2
Now we fill in the values. (21)2-(9)2=A2
441-81=360^2 so now with the 360^2 we have to squareroot it so the square root of 360 is 18.973f