Question 707457: It is believed that surveyors in ancient Egypt laid out right angles using a rope divided into twelve sections by eleven equally spaced knots. How could the surveyors use this rope to make a right angle?
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! They could use the rope to measure out 3 units for one leg and 4 units for the other leg. Then they would use the rope to measure 5 units from one endpoint of the leg and draw a circle. That would be used to construct a 3,4,5 side length triangle.
Since 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2 by the pythagorean theorem converse, we know that the triangle formed (3,4,5) is a right triangle.
They would then be able to scale either leg to whatever lengths they wanted once they had the right angle.
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