The length of BC is .
Solution:
Given ABC is a right triangle.
AC is the hypotenuse and BD is the altitude.
AB and BC are legs of the triangle ABC.
AC = 16 and DC = 5
<u>Leg rule of geometric mean theorem:</u>
Do cross multiplication.
Taking square root on both sides.
square and square roots get canceled, we get
The length of BC is .
Step 1: Find the slope:
This gives you , but we need to find b.
To find b, substitute in one (x,y) pair and it doesn't matter which one. I'll go with (4,-2):
Now take that b-value and plug in into the slope-intercept form:
It's always a good idea to toss in the other x-value from the other point, to make sure it checks out.