The foot of a ladder is placed 6 feet from a wall if the top of the ladder rests 8 feet up on the wall how long is the ladder?
Question
Answer:
Try to imagine this word problem, there is a wall and a ladder leaning against it, the space from the bottom of the ladder is labeled 6 and the length of the height the ladder reaches on the wall is 8. Imagine this as a right triangle now, where the length of the ladder is the hypotenuse and the length of the legs of the triangle is 6 and 8. Because we know this, we can use the Pythagorean theorem, a^2+b^2=c^2We then plug in the values and you get 6^2+8^2=c^2
When you simplify, you get 36+64=c^2 which is c^2=100
When you solve for c, you get c=10 which would be the length of the ladder :)
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11 months ago
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