Question

Betty measured the diagonal length of a playing card to be 6 inches. The short side of the card is 4 inches. What is the length of the side of the playing card?

Answer 1

The length of the longer side is 4.48 inches.

Explanation:

Given,

Length of diagonal = 6 in

Length of Short side = 4 in

Solution,

Let the length of long side be x.

Since the card is in the shape of rectangle. On drawing the diagonal the rectangle divides into two equal triangle.

So for find out the length of other side we use the Pythagoras theorem, which states that;

"In a right angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides."

`Hypotenuse^2=(Short\ side)^2+(Long\ side)^2`

`\therefore 6^2=4^2+x^2\\36=16+x^2\\x^2=36-16=20\\x=√(20) =2√(5)`

`x=2*2.24=4.48\ in`

Thus the length of the longer side is 4.48 inches.