SOLUTION: The hypontenuse of a right triangle is 15 meters. If one leg is 3 meters longer than the other, then what are the lengths of the legs?

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Question 148012: The hypontenuse of a right triangle is 15 meters. If one leg is 3 meters longer than the other, then what are the lengths of the legs?
Answer by Alan3354(69443)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
The hypontenuse of a right triangle is 15 meters. If one leg is 3 meters longer than the other, then what are the lengths of the legs?
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Short leg = S




(s+12)*(s-9) = 0
s = 9, s = -12
Negative lengths don't work, so discard that.
s = 9
2nd side = 12
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Or, use quadratic instead of factoring
Solved by pluggable solver: SOLVE quadratic equation (work shown, graph etc)
Quadratic equation (in our case ) has the following solutons:



For these solutions to exist, the discriminant should not be a negative number.

First, we need to compute the discriminant : .

Discriminant d=441 is greater than zero. That means that there are two solutions: .




Quadratic expression can be factored:

Again, the answer is: 9, -12. Here's your graph:
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