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In 432 BC, part of the Greek city Olynthus was divided into rectangular city blocks measuring 120 feet by 300 feet. To the nearest foot, what is the diagonal distance across each city block.

1 Answer

1 vote

Answer:

323 feet

Explanation:

This is basically the Pythagorean Theorem. If you have experience with this formula, you will know that it only works with right triangles. Why are we talking about a triangle when this problem speaks of rectangles? Well, this is because when a rectangle is split diagonally, it is now two separate triangles. The Pythagorean Theorem states that a^2 + b^2 = c^2. To begin, we will take the base and height of the triangle and either square root them or square them. In this case, you will need to square them. When this is done, you will have the numbers 90,000 and 14,400. What do we do with these? We will add them together now. Next, we will take the sum of these two numbers (104,400), and square root it. This leaves you with 323.109888, but, we need to round it to the nearest foot or, the nearest whole number. This will give us 323 feet as our final answer. Glad I was able to help! ;):)

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