SOLUTION: A light is to be mounted on the side of a building 18ft above the ground. The closest a ladder can be placed to the building is 6ft. To the nearest foot how long of a ladder will t

Question 747848: A light is to be mounted on the side of a building 18ft above the ground. The closest a ladder can be placed to the building is 6ft. To the nearest foot how long of a ladder will the electrician need so that he can mount the light?
Answer by Kg2003(10) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
If you draw the picture, you will see that it is a right triangle you are solving for. To solve for the hypotenuse(the ladder in this case) you would use the Pythagorean theorem which is . When you substitute in your values you get
Next simplify and get . Simplify some more and now you have Square root both sides and do some rounding to get that the ladder is approximately 19 feet long.
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