Question

One of the legs of a right triangle measures 2 cm and the other leg measures 1 cm. Find the measure of the hypotenuse. If necessary, round to the nearest tenth.

Answer 1

Answer: 2.2 cm

Step-by-step explanation: To solve this we are going to use the Pythagorean Theorem which states that in a right triangle, a^2 + b^2 = c^2, with a and b being the two legs and c being the hypotenuse. Using the information given, we can plug 2 cm and 1 cm into our equation.

2^2+1^2=c^2, squaring out we get 4+1=c^2, combine the 4 and 1 to get 5=c^2. Now to isolate c, we have to take the square root of both sides,
`√(5)=√(c^2 )`, that equals 2.236=c.

Then to round to the nearest tenth we look at the hundredth place and see it is less than 5 so we round down to get 2.2 cm.