Question

Dylan has a square piece of metal that measures 10 inches on each side. he cuts the metal along the diagonal, forming two right triangles. what is the length of the hypotenuse of each right triangle to the nearest tenth of an inch

Answer 1

You need to use the Pythagorean theory. a² + b² = c². So you would end up with 10²+10²=c². So, 10²=100, therefore you would end up with 200=c². In order to find the length of the hypotenuse, you need to find C. To do this, you need to undo the square and find the square root of 200 and C. So, you would get √200=√c² which would equal 14.1 inches. Then, if needed to check the answer, plug the 10,10,and 14.1 back into the a²+b²=c² and it should make the statement true.