SOLUTION: A kite is flying on 20 feet of string. It’s horizontal distance from the person flying it is 4 feet less than its vertical distance from the ground. Find its horizontal distance
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Question 1147588: A kite is flying on 20 feet of string. It’s horizontal distance from the person flying it is 4 feet less than its vertical distance from the ground. Find its horizontal distance from the person and its vertical distance from the ground. Answer by greenestamps(13200) (Show Source):
Of course, in the real world the string from the kite flier to the kite would not be a straight line....
But for the purposes of the problem, suppose it is. Then the horizontal and vertical distances and the string form a right triangle.
Algebraically, then, by the Pythagorean Theorem,
You can continue from there to solve the problem algebraically if needed.
But with a little experience with this kind of problem, you might notice that a hypotenuse of 20 might be a "scale model" of a right triangle with a hypotenuse of 5 -- a 3-4-5 right triangle.
The scale model would be 12-16-20; and those lengths satisfy the given condition that the hypotenuse is 20 and the length of one leg is 4 more than the length of the other.
