Question

A ladder is propped up against the side of a building. The top of the ladder touches the building 40 feet above the ground. The bottom of the ladder is placed 10 feet from the base of the building. How long is the ladder? Round your answer to the nearest foot.

Answer 1

Explanation:

This is a right triangle problem of the simplest variety in that we only need Pythagorean's Theorem to solve for the missing side.

Pythagorean's Theorem says that the sum of the lengths of the 2 legs squared will equal the length of the hypotenuse squared. For us that looks like this:

`40^2+10^2=h^2` and

`1700=h^2` so

h = 41 feet, rounded to the nearest foot