Question 202190: if one side of my triangle is 12 and one side is 20 what is the 3rd side?
Answer by Earlsdon(6294)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! Just imagine that you have two sticks, one is 12 inches and the other is 20 inches, that are hinged together at one end so that you can open and close them thus forming a V.
You can easily see that you can form a triangle by connecting a third stick at the end of the two, but because you can open and close the hinged sticks, the third sick can be of almost any length, except, of course, it must be shorter than the sum of the lengths of the two hinged sticks.
It's impossible to say until you provide more information about the triangle.
For example, if you provide the perimeter of the triangle, then an answer can be found.
If you provide the measure of one or more of the angles, then an answer can be found.
If you tell us that this is a right triangle and you further tell us which is the longest side, then we can say what the length of the third side is.
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Later addition!
I'm sorry I wasted your time but I'm even sorrier that you wasted my time!
The only way that your answer of 16 would be correct is if the triangle in your problem happened to be a right triangle and if the 20-side happened to be the hyptenuse of the right triangle. You provided no information at all about this!
But from the very limited information that you provided, my answer was sufficient and appropriate.
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