A rope goes from one building to another.

Question

A rope goes from one building to another. The distance between the buildings is 10m, and the rope is tied at each building at a point 8m and 4m from the ground. Find the length of the rope.

 

Answer 1

Make a drawing. Assume that the rope is TAUT, so that it can be shown as a straight line segment.

 

This will be an exercise using the Pythagorean Theorem. The answer will be only the rope length, not including the additional lengths of rope at each end required to accomplish the tying operation. When you give the answer from the computation, tell the teacher that you must have, say, at least ½ m at each end in order to be able to tie the rope to the hooks or similar hardware.