Question

Kamal said the distance from the top of the balloon to the ground in the Example is Ï···· 353 ft. What mistake might Kamal have made? 1 2

Answer 1

Complete question is;

Kamal said the distance from the top of the balloon to the ground in the Example image attached is √353 ft. What mistake might Kamal have made?

Answer:

the mistake Kamal made is that she probably used 17 ft as the perpendicular side of the triangle with b as the hypotenuse instead of using 17ft as the hypotenuse

Explanation:

From the image attached, we can see that the distance from the top of the balloon which is blue in color to the ground is denoted by "b".

Now the triangle is a right angle triangle with hypotenuse = 15ft + 2ft = 17 ft; the adjacent side = 8 ft, while the opposite side is "b".

Thus, we can use pythagoras theorem to solve this as;

b = √(17² - 8²)

b = √(289 - 64)

b = √225

b = 15ft

However,we are told Kamal got b as √353 ft.

From inspection of the calculations we just did, if we had used addition instead of subtraction, we would have gotten b = √353 ft.

Thus, we can under that the mistake Kamal made is that she probably used 17 ft as the perpendicular side of the triangle with b as the hypotenuse instead of using 17ft as the hypotenuse.