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60"FMostly cloudyQuestionThe measure of one angle of a right triangle is 40° more than the measure of the smallest angle. Find the measure of thesmallest angle.Provide your answer below:FEEDBACKMORE INSTRUCTIONSUBMITContent attribution

User Dmitry Polyakovsky
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1 Answer

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14 votes

Recall that the two acute angles of a right triangle add up to 90 degrees.

Let s be the measure (in degrees) of the smallest angle of the given right triangle, then we can set the following equation:


s+40+s=90.

Adding like terms we get:


2s+40=90.

Subtracting 40 from the above result we get:


\begin{gathered} 2s+40-40=90-40, \\ 2s=50. \end{gathered}

Dividing the above result by 2 we get:


\begin{gathered} (2s)/(2)=(50)/(2), \\ s=25. \end{gathered}

Therefore the measure of the smallest angle is 25º.

Answer: 25º.

User Shuvayan Das
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