SOLUTION: Find the length of the segment

Question 118095: Find the length of the segment
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Start with the given line segment

Draw a line straight down from the right end of the line segment

From that point, draw a horizontal line to the left end of the line segment. Notice how a right triangle is formed.

From the picture, we can see that the triangle has legs of 2 and 3 and an unknown hypotenuse (which is the length of the line segment)

Since we can see that the triangle has legs of 3 and 2 with a hypotenuse of x, we can use Pythagoreans theorem to find the unknown side.

Pythagoreans theorem:

where a and b are the legs of the triangle and c is the hypotenuse

Plug in a=3, b=2, and c=x. Now lets solve for x

Square each individual term

Combine like terms

Take the square root of both sides

Which approximates to...

So our answer to the nearest hundredth is

So the line segment is about 3.61 units long
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