Question

how do you get the answer to the following problem?... "Ben has two pencils, one that is 8 cm long, and one that is 15 cm long. If he uses these to create the legs of a right triangle on his desk, what length should the third pencil be to close out the right triangle? Round your answer to the nearest hundredth, if necessary."

Answer 1

If ben uses these to create the legs of a right triangle on his desk the shape he will get will be the following.

And we need to find the length of the triangle with the QUESTION MARK (the length L).

The Pythagoras's theorem comes in handy here, which says

`(8cm)^2+(15cm)^2=l^2`
`l^2=289`
`l=\sqrt[]{289}`