I'd love to answer but what's the question
Step-by-step explanation:
please explain
The distance between the tops of the poles is the hypotenuse of the triangle which is equal to the square root of (12^2 + 5^2)
The hypotenuse = square root (144 + 25) = 13 ft
Abigail and Spencer are correct, Lauren is incorrect.
One way to do it is with calculus. The distance between any point

on the line to the origin is given by

Now, both

and

attain their respective extrema at the same critical points, so we can work with the latter and apply the derivative test to that.

Solving for

, you find a critical point of

.
Next, check the concavity of the squared distance to verify that a minimum occurs at this value. If the second derivative is positive, then the critical point is the site of a minimum.
You have

so indeed, a minimum occurs at

.
The minimum distance is then