Question

Find the slant height of a square pyramid with base edges of 12 cm and an altitude of 8 cm?

Answer 1

To find the slant height we must take apart the pyramid first. Let us cut it in half. There we can easily see that the slant height is really just the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by half the base and the altitude.

Half the base length would be 6 cm.

Using the Pythagorean therom:

a² + b² = c²
6² + 8² = c²
36 + 64 = c²
100 = c²
c = 10

The slant height should be 10 cm. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

The answer is 10 centimeters.