Question

How do you find the height of a triangle (to calculate area)?

Answer 1

Answer:

The height of the triangle could be found by the Pythagoras theorem, where the result is, with the data of the exercise:

• Height of the triangle = 10.392

And the area of the triangle is:

• Area of the triangle = 31.176 units^2

Step-by-step explanation:

When you have two measurements of a triangle, as the case in the picture, you can find the third with the Pythagoras theorem, which is:

• (opposite leg)^2 + (adjacent leg)^2 = hypotenuse^2

As you can see in the picture, the measurement of the hypotenuse is 12, and the opposite leg could be 6, for this reason, we're gonna clear the adjacent leg of the formula above:

• (opposite leg)^2 + (adjacent leg)^2 = hypotenuse^2
• (adjacent leg)^2 = hypotenuse^2 - (opposite leg)^2

Now, we can replace the values in the formula obtained:

• (adjacent leg)^2 = hypotenuse^2 - (opposite leg)^2
• (adjacent leg)^2 = 12^2 - 6^2
• (adjacent leg)^2 = 144 - 36
• (adjacent leg)^2 = 108

Now, as we just need the adjacent leg, we take the square root of both sides:

• adjacent leg = $\sqrt{108}$
• adjacent leg = 10.392 approximately.

Now, with these data, we can find the area of the triangle with the next formula:

• Area of a triangle = (base * height) / 2
• And we replace the measurements:
• Area of a triangle = (6 * 10.392) / 2
• Area of a triangle = 31.176

As the image does not contain units, it would be simply this number, however, you should know that the area units are usually given squared, for example: in^2 or ft^2.