Question

The hypotenuse of a right triangle measures 16 cm and one of its legs measures 9 cm. Find the measure of the other leg. If necessary, round to the nearest tenth.

Answer 1

So I’ve made the right triangle below.
We are given one of two legs and the hypotenuse, so we need to find the missing leg. To do that, we will use the Pythagorean theorem: a^2 + b^2 = c^2. a and b are the legs and c is the hypotenuse.
In this problem, 9cm is one of the legs and 16cm is the hypotenuse. We will use x for the missing leg.

Pythagorean theorem:
a^2 + b^2 = c^2
Put in the numbers:
9^2 + x^2 = 16^2
Calculate:
81 + x^2 = 256
Subtract 81 to both sides:
x^2 = 175
Square root both sides:
x = 13.23 (rounded to the nearest tenth)

Hope this helped!