SOLUTION: The question is not from the book You have a square with 20 ft. sides, two people at opposite corners. How far apart are they? Not sure how to set this up, Thank you for your hel

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Question 81852: The question is not from the book
You have a square with 20 ft. sides, two people at opposite corners. How far apart are they?
Not sure how to set this up, Thank you for your help.
Found 2 solutions by stanbon, Earlsdon:
Answer by stanbon(75887) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Draw the square
Label the sides as 20
Draw a diagonal connecting the two people.
Use Pythagoras to find the distance
distance = sqrt(20^2 + 20^2)
distance = sqrt (2*20^2)
disance = 20sqrt2
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Cheers,
Stan H.

Answer by Earlsdon(6294) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Remember Pythagoras!
When you draw the diagonal (the line joining opposite corners) of a square, you divide the square into two congruent right triangles, right?
The diagonal is the hypotenuse (we'll call this side c) while the equal sides of the square are the legs of the right triangle (we'll call these sides a and b and, because they are equal, it doesn't matter which one is a and which one is b).
To quote Pythagoras...:"" This is known as the Pythagorean theorem.
You know that the sides of the square (a and b) are each 20 feet long. The Pythagorean theorem allows you to find the length of side c (the hypotenuse).
Substitute a = 20 and b = 20.

Now take the square root of both sides.

Take the square root of 400.
feet. This is the exact answer.
The approximate answer is:
feet. (to the nearest tenth)