Question

Find the length of the missing side of a rectangle if the diagonal is 13 cm and the shortest side is 5cm​

And please show the steps and explain

Answer 1

12 cm

Explanation:

I drew a picture of a rectangle with a diagonal measurement of 13 units and what appear to be the shortest side to be 5 units. (This picture was not drawn to scale.) We were has to find the longest side which I said was b. Notice the diagonal cuts the rectangle into right triangles.

We will need to use Pythagorean Theorem to find the length of the longer side of the rectangle.

`5^2+b^2=13^2`

`25+b^2=169`

Subtract 25 on both sides:

`b^2=144`

Take square root of both sides:

`b=√(144)` (I did not worry about the negative answer to this because we are dealing with lengths.)

`b=12`