Question

The length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is 13 centimeters and the length of one of the legs is 12 centimeters.find the number of centimeters in the length of the second leg

Answer 1

We can use the Pythagorean theorem ( $a^{2} + b^{2} = c^{2}$ ) , where a and b are the length of each of the two legs, and c is the length of the hypotenuse

$12^{2} + b^{2} = 13^{2}$
$b^{2} = 169 - 144 b^{2} = 25 \sqrt{b^{2} } = \sqrt{25} b = 5$
the length is 5cm