Question

The hypotenuse of a right triangle measures 16 cm and one of its legs measures 5 cm. Find the measure of the other leg. If necessary, round to the nearest tenth.

Answer 1

15.2 (rounded)

Explanation:

To solve we need to use the pythagrom theorem. This theory states that
`a^(2) + b^2 = c^2`. In which a and b are the legs of the triangle and c is the hypotenuse.

Because we have these numbers we can plug them into our equation:

`5^2 + b^2 = 16^2`.
`5^2 = 25` and
`16^2 = 256` so our final equation is
`25 + b^2 = 256`. To find b (our missing leg) we need to subtract 25 from both sides. This leaves us with the problem
`b^2=231`. The final step would be to square root both sides and we get our answer of about 15.2