Question

A 10 -foot ladder is leaning against a building. The base of the ladder is 3 feet from the side of the building. How high does the ladder reach along the side of the building? Answer exactly or round to 2 decimal places.

Answer 1

The ladder is 5.20 feet tall on the side of the building

Explanation:

Here, we simply want to calculate the height the ladder is from the base of the building

To get this, we need a pictorial representation of what we have here.

From what we have here, we have a right-angled triangle with a hypotenuse of 10 foot and a base of 3 feet

We apply Pythagoras’ theorem to get how far is the tip of the ladder from the base of building

Pythagoras’ stated that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the two other sides

In this case, let the height be x

So;

x^2 + 3^2 = 6^2

x^2 = 6^2 - 3^2

x^2 = 36 - 9

x^2 = 27

x = √27

x = 5.196 feet

which to two decimal places is 5.20 feet