Question

Mckenzie and Cara both tried to find the missing side of the right triangle.

Answer 1

Answer:

Both of them are correct

Step-by-step explanation:

Pythagorean theorem states that a^2 + b^2 = c^2, where c is the hypotenuse and a & b are the other two sides of a right triangle.  

Both Mckenzie and Cara did it well. The difference in their results relays on the different data they took, i. e., Mckenzie assumed that a = 5 and b = 13, therefore she correctly got that hypotenuse (c) is equal to 13.93; on the other hand, Cara assumed that a = 5 and c = 13, and correctly found that b = 12.

Answer 2

It depends on the given information.

McKenzie's work is correct if the two short sides are given as 5 and 13.

Cara's work is correct is almost correct if 5 is one leg, and 13 is the hypotenuse. The exact answer is 12, but she wrote it as approximately equal.  That's her only problem.

By the way, Ddssaa122: when posting questions, the power of a number is written as 5^2 and not 52.   If you copy and paste, please make sure you add the caret sign to indicate a power, or else you will suffer by getting a wrong answer.    5^2=5*5, 52=4*13, so they are not the same.