Geometry Help

Question

A young man is 36 meters away from a building and looking at a bird sitting on top of the building. The man knows he is 85 meters away from the bird. How tall is the building? 

 

The building is __ tall?

 

 I have to show my work

Answer 1

In this case, we have a right triangle with one leg of 36m, and an hypotenuse of 85m

 

We can answer the question by using the Pythagorean theorem that c² = a² + b² where c is the hypotenuse, and a is one of the legs.

 

So, 85m² = 36m² +b²

7225m² = 1296m² + b²

the square root of 5929m² = b

b = 77m