SOLUTION: Bradley is mountain climbing with Colin and had just climbed a 16-meter vertical rock face. Colin is standing at the bottom of the cliff, looking up at Bradley. If Colin is 20 met

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Question 1130356: Bradley is mountain climbing with Colin and had just climbed a 16-meter vertical rock face. Colin is standing at the bottom of the cliff, looking up at Bradley. If Colin is 20 meters away from Bradley, how far away from the cliff is Colin.
Found 2 solutions by jim_thompson5910, MathTherapy:
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!

Draw out the picture

Diagram is not to scale
x = distance, in meters, Colin is from the base of the cliff

We have a right triangle forming. Use the pythagorean theorem to find x



Plug in a = x, b = 16, c = 20



Subtract 256 from both sides



Apply the square root to both sides





Answer: Colin is 12 meters away from the base of the cliff
Answer by MathTherapy(10552)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!

Bradley is mountain climbing with Colin and had just climbed a 16-meter vertical rock face. Colin is standing at the bottom of the cliff, looking up at Bradley. If Colin is 20 meters away from Bradley, how far away from the cliff is Colin.
Looking at the sides of the right triangle, formed by the given lengths, we see that when 16 and 20 are each divided by 4, we get 4 for one of

the LEGS and 5 for the hypotenuse. This is a 3-4-5 PYTHAGOREAN TRIPLE, which means that the other side - the SHORTER LEG - is 4 times 3, which 

gives us a length of:  

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