SOLUTION: A 28 ft ladder is placed against a wall 19 ft high. How far away from the wall is the base of the ladder? (Draw a picture to help) Give your answer to one decimal place.

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Question 1173709: A 28 ft ladder is placed against a wall 19 ft high. How far away from the wall is the base of the ladder? (Draw a picture to help) Give your answer to one decimal place.
Answer by mila nedic(19) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
We can use Pythagorean theorem for this type of question.
In the illustration we can see that the ladder, base (length of wall to ladder), and wall make a right angle triangle which we can use the theorem for to find the base.
The Pythagorean theorem is a%5E2%2Bb%5E2=c%5E2
In this case a is the wall, b is the base and c will always be the hypotenuse (the longest side or the side opposite of the right angle).
We can manipulate the theorem to find the base or b. So we want to find b which we can do by changing a%5E2%2Bb%5E2=c%5E2 to b=sqrt%28c%5E2-a%5E2%29. Now we can input the numbers: b=sqrt%2828%5E2-19%5E2%29
b=20.6 ft rounded to the nearest tenth.
Therefore the wall is 20.6 ft from the ladder at the base.