Question

Around Ronald's

rectangular backyard is a
fence with a length of 30
feet and a width of 20 feet.
He wants to hang a
clothesline over his lawn,
from the far left corner to
the opposite corner. How
long will the clothesline
need to be?

Answer 1

To answer your question, we can use the Pythagorean theorem which states that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse (the longest side) is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides.

In this case, the two sides are the length and the width of the rectangle backyard, and the hypotenuse is the length of the clothesline we want to find. So we have:

Hypotenuse^2 = Length^2 + Width^2

Hypotenuse^2 = 30^2 + 20^2

Hypotenuse^2 = 900 + 400

Hypotenuse^2 = 1300

Taking the square root of both sides, we get:

Hypotenuse = sqrt(1300)

Hypotenuse = 36.06 feet (rounded to two decimal places)

Therefore, the clothesline needs to be about 36.06 feet long to reach from the far left corner to the opposite corner of the rectangular backyard.