Question

Determine whether a triangle can be formed with the given side lengths. If so, use Heron's formula to find the area of the triangle.

a = 240
b = 127
c = 281

Answer 1

Do you remember what Herons formula said?

Answer 2

not really

Answer 3

This might help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heron%27s_formula

To determine if these lengths are possible, try finding the angle between the two smaller segments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#Law_of_cosines. You can also check if using Heron's formula, that every side is smaller than "s" in the 1st link I provided. If this were not the case, then the area would be imaginary (that is, not real) because then you would be taking the square root of a negative number.

As a hint, I found that the angle between the smaller segments was 94.9 degrees.

That's it!