determine the length of a leg of a right triangle using the Pythagorean theorem

Question

Solve a problem using inequalities in a triangle

Answer 1

The pythagorean theorem says that if we have a triangle with a right angle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs...

 

This is generally written a^2+b^2=c^2, where a and b are lengths of the legs and c is the length of the hypotenuse.

 

Thus solving for a (the length of 1 leg) will yield: a= \sqrt(c^2-b^2)

 

We are talking about distances so we take the positive value for square root based on context.

 

Note that the length of a leg of a right triangle is equal to the square root of the difference between the squares of the lengths of the hypotenuse and the other leg!