SOLUTION: 1. A customer wants to make a teepee in his backyard for his children. He plans to use lengths of PVC plumbing pipe for the supports on the teepee, and he wants the teepee to be 12

Algebra ->  Pythagorean-theorem -> SOLUTION: 1. A customer wants to make a teepee in his backyard for his children. He plans to use lengths of PVC plumbing pipe for the supports on the teepee, and he wants the teepee to be 12      Log On


   

Question 121959: 1. A customer wants to make a teepee in his backyard for his children. He plans to use lengths of PVC plumbing pipe for the supports on the teepee, and he wants the teepee to be 12 feet across and 8 feet tall. How long should the PVC plumbing pipe be?
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
If we cut the triangle in half vertically down the middle, we get this triangle:


Since we can see that the triangle has legs of 8 and 6 with a hypotenuse of x, we can use Pythagoreans theorem to find the unknown side.


Pythagoreans theorem:

a%5E2%2Bb%5E2=c%5E2 where a and b are the legs of the triangle and c is the hypotenuse



8%5E2%2B6%5E2=x%5E2 Plug in a=8, b=6, and c=x. Now lets solve for x


6+4+%2B+3+6+=++x++%5E+2 Square each individual term



1+0+0+=++x++%5E+2 Combine like terms


s+q+r+t+%28+1+0+0+%29+=+s+q+r+t+%28++x++%5E+2+%29 Take the square root of both sides


10=x Simplify the square root

So the hypotenuse of this triangle is 10


Since we cut the triangle in half, this means the other triangle's hypotenuse also has a length of 10

After putting the two triangles back together, we have this triangle:


Photobucket


Since the figure was pointing to one side, I'm assuming that the problem is asking about one side. So the length of one pipe is 10 ft.