SOLUTION: A 15 feet ladder is 5 feet away from a wall. How far above the floor is the top of the ladder?

Question 121931: A 15 feet ladder is 5 feet away from a wall. How far above the floor is the top of the ladder?
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 5 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=5, and c=15. Now lets solve for x

Square each individual term

Subtract 25 from both sides

Combine like terms

Take the square root of both sides

Simplify the square root

Which approximates to...

So our answer is

So the top of the ladder is about 14.14 feet about the floor
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