The length of one leg of a right triangle is 8ft. The length of the hypotenuse is 4ft longer than the other leg. Find the length of the hypotenuse and the other leg.

Question

anonymous · Answer

The length of the leg other leg is 15 ft. and the length of the hypotenuse is 17 ft..

You represent the legs as the following variables: 
other leg = x
therefore hypotenuse is x+2 since it is 2ft longer.

Plug this into pythagorean theorem and solve for x :

(x+2)^2 = x^2 + 8^2. 
X^2+4x+4 = X^2+64
4x=60 so 60/4 =15 ( other leg) so 15 +2= hypotenuse.

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* the answer in the post above (colinsnewid), it cant be 8+10 because its two feet bigger than the other unknown leg, not the leg that is already given.