What is the answer?

Question

The bridge support is 80 feet tall. The length of the cable is 170 feet. What is the distance in feet from the base of the bridge support to the point where the cable connects to the roadway?

Answer 1

For questions like this, the best thing to do is draw it out. Draw the bridge, the support and the cable and you'll end up with a triangle. 80 is one of the legs and 170 is the hypotenuse. You need to find the distance from the base of the bridge support to where the cable connects to the roadway - that's the other leg of the triangle. So now all you need to do is plug your numbers into the Pythagorean Theorem:

a² + b² = c² (where a and b are the legs and c is the hypotenuse)

80² + b² = 170²

b² = 170² - 80²

b² = 22,500

b = 150

So the distance is 150 feet.