Question

Raymond was riding a zip-cable from the top of a viewing post. The cable is 60 yards long. The viewing post is 48 yards high and forms a right angle with the ground, as shown in the picture below. Given this information, how far is the bottom of the cable from the base of the viewing post?

Answer 1

A 36 yards
B 24 yards
C 72 yards

Answer 2

In other words, you are looking for a in the figure above.

Answer 3

Do you know the Pythagorean theorem?

Answer 4

yes it goes something like this r^2 + y^2

Answer 5

yeah that// ^^^^^^

Answer 6

In your case, you have b and c, and you can solve for a.

Answer 7

yeah

Answer 8

Plug in 60 yd for c and 48 yd for b, and find a.

Answer 9

its 2280

Answer 10

No.
Show the numbers in the equation that you used.

Answer 11

idkk.

Answer 12

How did you come up with 2280?

Answer 13

I multiply them

Answer 14

That's not it. Here's how you do it.

Answer 15

We are letting 60 yd equal c in the Pythagorean equation.
We are letting 48 yd equal b in the Pythagorean equation.
We leave "a" as "a" because it is an unknown.

We get this equation:

a^2 + 48^2 = 60^2

Now to solve the equation, first we calculate 48^2 and 60^2.

Answer 16

48^2 = 2304
60^2 = 3600

Now we have:

a^2 + 2304 = 3600

Answer 17

Are you following so far?

Answer 18

yes

Answer 19

Since we are solving for a, we need to isolate a.
First, we subtract 2304 from both sides.

a^2 + 2304 - 2304 = 3600 - 2304

a^2 = 1296

Now we have what a^2 is equal to, but we want what "a" is equal to, so we take the square root of both sides:

a = 36

Answer 20

The answer is
36 yd

Answer 21

a² = 60² - 48²
a = square root (60² - 48²)