Question

A man on the top of a building wants to have a guy wire extend to a point on the ground 30 ft from the building. To the nearest foot, how long will the wire have to be if the building is 105 ft tall?

Answer 1

109.20 ft

Explanation:

Look at the attached figure to see the scenario. Now notice that the situation creates a Right Triangle and what we need to find is the hypotenuse, which is the longest side of the triangle, which is across the right angle.

To solve this you need to remember the Pythagorean Theorem.

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

c = hypotenuse

a and b are the other legs of the triangle. So let's get what we know and plug it into the formula:

`c^2=30^2 + 105^2\\\\c^2 = 900 + 11,025\\\\c^2=11,925 \\\\√(c^2)=√(11,925) \\\\c = 109.20`