SOLUTION: Rodger leans a 13 ft ladder against his home to wash te windows on the second floor.If the window is 12 ft from the ground, how far away from the house should Rodger place the ladd

Question 596156: Rodger leans a 13 ft ladder against his home to wash te windows on the second floor.If the window is 12 ft from the ground, how far away from the house should Rodger place the ladder?
Answer by math-vortex(648) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Hi, there--
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We can model this problem with a right triangle. One leg of the triangle runs horizontally along the ground; its length is the distance from the bottom of the ladder to the house.
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The other leg runs vertically along the wall of the house from the ground to the base of the window; we know its length is 12 feet.
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The hypotenuse of the triangle is the ladder itself. We know that the ladder is 13 feet long.
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We want to find the distance from the base of the ladder to the house, length of the first leg. Let's call b the length of this leg. Since we have a right triangle, we can use the Pythagorean Equation. The variables, a and b, are the legs of the right triangle, and c is the length of the hypotenuse.

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Substitute our known values into the equation and solve for b.

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Subtract 144 from both sides.

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Take the square root of both sides. Since 5*5=25, b=5.

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Roger should place the bottom of the ladder 5 feet from the house.
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That's it. Feel free to email is you still have Qs.
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Ms.Figgy
math.in.the.vortex@gmail.com

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