Question

A student is asked to find the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle. The length of one leg is 32 centimeters, and the length of the other leg is 22 centimeters. The student incorrectly says that the length of the hypotenuse is 7.3 centimeters.

Answer 1

Explanation:

First off, since we're talking about finding the correct hypotenuse for the triangle, we know to use the Pythagorean Theorem:
a^2+b^2=c^2

Since we know from the question, 32 and 22 are not the hypotenuse we know that those two values would be a and b. Now, all we do is stick these both into the equation and solve!

`32^2+22^2=c^2`


`1024+484=c^2`

`1508=c^2`

`√(1508)=c`

`c=38.83cm`