Question

What is h, the total height in feet of the piece of plywood ?

Answer 1

14 feet

Explanation:

The height of the plywood is in two parts, the part that is a side of the right triangle (h - 2) and the 2 feet that is an extension of that side.

One can find (h - 2) with the Pythagorean theorem which states that the sum of the squares of the two legs of the right triangle is equivalent to the square of the hypotenuse. (if the legs were of length a and b and the hypotenuse was of length c, then they could be in the formula
`a^(2) + b^(2) = c^(2)`.

Then this means that you can input the values in the equation so that it appears as:
`5^(2) + (h - 2)^(2) = 13^(2)`. If you solved this equation, you would get that (h - 2) is 12 and when you add 2 to get the total length of h, you would get 14 feet as the total height of the plywood.

Hope that helps : )