SOLUTION: The bottom of a ladder is placed 8 feet from the wall of a house. The wall and the ground form a right angle. if the ladder is 15 feet in length, how far up the wall does it reach(

Question 117736: The bottom of a ladder is placed 8 feet from the wall of a house. The wall and the ground form a right angle. if the ladder is 15 feet in length, how far up the wall does it reach(to the nearest foot)?
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
We basically have this triangle set up:

Since we can see that the triangle has legs of x and 8 with a hypotenuse of 15, 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=x, b=8, and c=15. Now lets solve for x

Square each individual term

Subtract 64 from both sides

Combine like terms

Take the square root of both sides

Which approximates to...

So our answer is

so the ladder can reach about 13 ft on the wall