SOLUTION: The base of a ladder is 7 feet away from the wall. The top of the ladder is 7 feet from the floor. Find the length of the ladder to the nearest thousandth.

Question 96021: The base of a ladder is 7 feet away from the wall. The top of the ladder is 7 feet from the floor. Find the length of the ladder to the nearest thousandth.
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 7 and 7 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=7, b=7, and c=x. Now lets solve for x

Square each individual term

Combine like terms

Take the square root of both sides

Simplify the square root

Which approximates to...

So our answer is

which is 9.899 feet to the nearest thousandth
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