Question

An office building is on fire, so the firefighters must use a ladder to get inside the burning building before too much damage is done. The ladder is leaning 5 meters away from the base of the house, and the ladder is 10 meters tall. How far off the ground is the third story window. Show work please

Answer 1

Hello!

The ground, building and ladder are making a triangle, and since the ladder is tilted and is the longest side, it is the hypotenuse. We know how long the floor (leg) and ladder (hypotenuse) are. We need to solve for how tall the third floor window is from the ground. To do so we will use the Pythagorean Theorem (c²-b²=a²).

100-25=75
√75≈8.66

The third story window is about 8.66 meters from the ground.

I hope this helps!