The length of one leg of an isosceles right triangle is 7 units. What is the length of the hypotenuse?

Question

Math 8th grade

Answer 1

An isoceles triangle is defined as having two sides of equal length and an hypotenuse. Therefore the 7 is telling us the two leg measurements. We just need to put it into the pythagorean theorem (a2 + b2 = c2).

7² + 7² = c²

49 + 49 = c²

98 = c²

We want our answer (c) to not be squared because math likes EVERYTHING to be in the simplest terms it can so: 

√98 = √c²

9.9 = c