SOLUTION: A kite is flying on 20 feet of string. It’s horizontal distance from the person flying it is 4 feet less than its vertical distance from the ground. Find its horizontal distance

Question 1147588: A kite is flying on 20 feet of string. It’s horizontal distance from the person flying it is 4 feet less than its vertical distance from the ground. Find its horizontal distance from the person and its vertical distance from the ground.
Answer by greenestamps(13200) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!

Of course, in the real world the string from the kite flier to the kite would not be a straight line....

But for the purposes of the problem, suppose it is. Then the horizontal and vertical distances and the string form a right triangle.

Algebraically, then, by the Pythagorean Theorem,

You can continue from there to solve the problem algebraically if needed.

But with a little experience with this kind of problem, you might notice that a hypotenuse of 20 might be a "scale model" of a right triangle with a hypotenuse of 5 -- a 3-4-5 right triangle.

The scale model would be 12-16-20; and those lengths satisfy the given condition that the hypotenuse is 20 and the length of one leg is 4 more than the length of the other.

ANSWER: horizontal distance 12 feet; vertical distance 16 feet.

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