Question 315517
A man holds a string 2 meters long, level with the top of his head. The other end of the string is in the ground 120 centimeters from his feet. How tall is the man?

The way I am reading this since we need to figure out the man's height is as follows:

It is a right triangle, with the hypotenuse (the diagonal, the longest side) being the string which is 2 meters long, or 200 cm long.
There is 100 cm in a meter.
One leg of the right triangle is 120 cm long.
The other leg of the right triangle is the man's height.

Pythagorean Theorem: a^2 + b^2 = c^2

a^2 + (120)^2 = (200)^2
a^2 + 14400 = 40000
a^2 = 25600
a = 160 cm = 1.6 meters is how tall the man is