SOLUTION: A wire is used to anchor a 20 foot high pole. One end of the wire is attached to the top of the pole. The other end is fastened to a stake five feet away from the bottom of the p

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Question 240105: A wire is used to anchor a 20 foot high pole. One end of the wire is attached to the top of the pole. The other end is fastened to a stake five feet away from the bottom of the pole. Find the length of the wirse, to the nearest tenth of a foot.

Can someone help me? - not sure how to start the problem....thank you.
Answer by solver91311(24713) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!


The first thing that you have to do is presume that the pole is exactly perpendicular to the ground in the direction of the point where the wire is attached to the ground. That way you have a right triangle and that is the only way you can solve this problem with the information given.

Now that you know you have a right triangle, one leg of the triangle is 20 feet because that is the length of the pole from the surface of the ground to the top , and the other leg is 5 feet because that is the distance from the base of the pole to the point where the wire is attached to the ground.

Now just apply Pythagoras to calculate the measure of the hypotenuse of the triangle. Let be the length of the wire.



Time to get out your calculator. Remember to round off according to the problem instructions. By the way, the round-off instructions in the problem are inappropriate. The results of a computation involving measurements should never be reported to a greater precision than the least precise of the given measurements. That means that, given the fact that the measurements here given to the nearest foot, you should actually report your answer to the nearest whole foot. On the other hand, had the given measurements been reported as 20.0 feet and 5.0 feet, then reporting the answer to the nearest tenth of a foot would be correct. All of that notwithstanding, follow the problem instructions.

John