Question

PLEASE HELP
What is the length of the altitude of the equilateral triangle below?

Answer 1

To answer this we apply the Pythagorean Theorem, this states that given a right triangle with a hypotenuse -longest side- (
`a`) and two sides (
`b` and
`c`), then:


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

So, for your problem, we can see right triangle with a hypotenuse of 8 (
`a=8`), one side equal to 4 (
`b=4`) and other side unknown; this means we have the following:


`8^2=4^2+x^2`

We can easily solve for
`x` (altitude of the equilateral triangle):


`x= √(8^2-4^2)= √(64-16)= √(48)=4 √(3)`

Hence, the answer is E.