Question

A certain television is advertised as a 58-inch TV (the diagonal length). If the width of the TV is 42 inches, how many inches tall is the TV?

Answer 1

Your answer will be 16

Answer 2

The height of the television is:

• 40 inches.

Explanation:

To solve the proposed exercise you must understand two things:

1. Since the flat figure of a television is a rectangle, it can be subdivided into a right triangle (since it has at least a 90 ° angle)
2. A variation of the Pythagorean Triangle will be used.

The Pythagorean triangle tells us that the sum of the base squared and the height squared of a right triangle will be equal to the hypotenuse (diagonal) squared of the triangle, which is usually expressed like this:

• a^2 + b^2 = c^2

But to make it more understandable, let's express it like this:

• base^2 + height^2 = diagonal^2

Since the diagonal and the base (width) of the television are provided in the exercise, we must clear the height and calculate:

• height^2 = diagonal^2 - base^2
• height^2 = 58^2 - 42^2
• height^2 = 1600

To identify the value if in the square, you must apply square root to the obtained value:

• height^2 = square root of 1600
• height^2 = 40 inches.