Question

The leg of a right triangle is 5units and the hypotenuse is 8 units. What is the length, in the units, of the other leg of the triangle?

Answer 1

Hello!

To solve this, we will use the Pythagorean Theorem, where the hypotenuse is c, and the legs are a and b.

a²+b²=c²

As we can see, we already know the length of the hypotenuse, so we will switch the formula around to solve for a, the missing leg.

c²=b²=a²

Now we will square our numbers and subtract. Then we will find the square root of our answer to undo the exponent and find a.

64-25=39
√39≈6.24

The length of the other leg of the triangle is about 6.24 unites.

I hope this helps!