A 10-foot ladder is placed against a vertical wall of a building,withthe bottomof the ladder standing on the level ground 6 feet from the base of the building.How high up the wall does the ladder reach?
The ladder reaches ____ feet up the wall.
+130536 The ladder forms the hypotenuse of a right triangle and the distance from the wall forms one of the legs......the the distance that the ladder reaches up the wall forms the other leg....let this = L
And from the Pythagorean Theorem, we know that
6^2 + L^2 = 10^2
36 + L^2 = 100 subtract 36 from both sides
L^2 = 100 - 36
L^2 = 64 take the square root of both sides
L = 8 ft
