Question

Please help IDK how to do this!

A painter leans a 12 ft ladder against a building. The base of the ladder is 5 ft from the building. To the nearest foot, how high on the building does the ladder reach?

Answer 1

For this problem you must do Pythagorean theorem:

`a^(2) + b^(2) =c^(2)`

In this example 10ft is c and 7ft is a (or it could be b, and you'll be solving for a instead of b. It's the same thing, since a and b are both legs)

Plug what you know into the equation:

`7^(2) +b^(2) = 10^(2)`

49 +b^{2} = 100

Bring 49 to the right side by subtracting it:

b^{2} = 51

Now you still must isolate b. The opposite of squaring is taking the square root so take the square root of both sides to cancel it from the left side:

`b =√(51)`

b = 7.1414

b ≈ 7 ft

Hope this helped!