Question

An isosceles triangle in which the two equal sides, labeled a, are longer than the base, labeled b. This isosceles triangle has two sides of equal length, a, that are longer than the length of the base, b. The perimeter of the triangle is 15.7 centimeters. The equation 2a+b=15.7 can be used to find the side lengths. If one of the longer sides is 6.3 centimeters, what is the length of the base?(in cm)

Answer 1

Hey there! I’m happy to help!

We see that the two equal sides are longer than the base. This means that our a will be larger than b. The problem says that one of the longer sides is 6.3. Since the two longer sides are equal, that means that both longer sides are 6.3 cm. Therefore, we can simply subtract these two from the perimeter to find the shorter side, which is the base.

15.7-6.3-6.3=3.1

Therefore, the length of the base is 3.1 cm.

I hope that this helps!