Question

A right triangle has a leg length of 10 meters and a hypotenuse that is 26 meters. What is the length of the other leg?

Answer 1

Answer:

The length of the other leg is 24 meters.

Step-by-step explanation:

Well, let's think about the equation that gives us the hypotenuse in the first place, the Pythagorean theorem (which only works on right triangles!).

$a^2+b^2=c^2$

The a^2 is one side of the triangle that we know and the b^2 is the other, the c^2 is the hypotenuse we are trying to solve.

Seeing that in this question, we can put 10, in the place of a^2, and 26 in the place of c^2

$10^2+b^2=26^2$

That's what we have down the information we have, but now we'll have to do some rearranging to solve for the other leg's length. First let's square the numbers, 10^2 = 100 and 26^2= 676!

$100+b^2=676$

Now we need to get b^2 by itself so we can solve it! Let's subtract 100 from both sides to do so,

$100-100+b^2=676-100$

$b^2=676-100$

$b^2=576$

Now we got b^2 = 576!

But that's not our answer we have to square root it to get rid of the squared part!

$\sqrt{b^2} = \sqrt{576}$

and when we do that we get,

$b=24$

The length of the other leg is 24 meters!

Answer 2

The other length of the other leg is 32 metes