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35 votes
a kite is flying 16 ft off the ground. it’s line is pulled taut and casts a 12 ft shadow. find the length of the line. if necessary, round to the nearest tenth

a kite is flying 16 ft off the ground. it’s line is pulled taut and casts a 12 ft-example-1
User Maggocnx
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1 Answer

16 votes
16 votes

We are given the following triangle

where we want to solve for x. Note that this triangle is a right triangle. Therefore, the missing side is the hypotenuse of the triangle.

To find the measure of the hypotenuse, we are going to use pythagora's theorem, which states

Given the triangle

we have the equation


c^2=a^2+b^2

in our case, we have x=c, a=12, b=16. So we have the equation


x^2=12^2+16^2=144+256=400

So, if we apply the square root on both sides, we get


x=\sqrt[2]{400}=\pm20

however, as x is a distance, it must be a positive number. So we have that


x=20

a kite is flying 16 ft off the ground. it’s line is pulled taut and casts a 12 ft-example-1
a kite is flying 16 ft off the ground. it’s line is pulled taut and casts a 12 ft-example-2
User Oleksii Trekhleb
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2.5k points