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The edge length of a cube is 17 cm. Identify the length of its diagonal. Round to the nearest tenth, if necessary. HELP PLEASE!!

User Nsx
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1 Answer

7 votes

Answer:

29.4 cm

Explanation:

The length of the space diagonal can be found to be the root of the squares of the three orthogonal edge lengths. For a cube, those edge lengths are all the same, so the diagonal length is ...

d = √(17^2 + 17^2 +17^2) = 17√3 ≈ 29.4 . . . . cm

_____

Consider a rectangular prism with edge lengths a, b, c. Then the face diagonal of the face perpendicular to edge "a" has length ...

(face diagonal)^2 = (b^2 +c^2)

and the space diagonal has length ...

(space diagonal)^2 = a^2 + (face diagonal)^2 = a^2 +b^2 +c^2

So, the length of the space diagonal is ...

space diagonal = √(a^2 +b^2 +c^2)

when the prism is a cube, these are all the same (a=b=c). This is the formula we used above.

User Jeremy Salwen
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