A building is 1 ft from a 11-ft fence that surrounds the property. A worker wants to wash a window in the building 14 ft from the ground. He plans to place a ladder over the fence so it rests against the building. He decides he should place the ladder 9 ft from the fence for stability. To the nearest tenth of a foot, how long a ladder will he need

Respuesta :

Answer:

17.2 feet

Step-by-step explanation:

The ladder is placed 9 feet away from the fence, which is 1 foot away from the building. Therefore, the ladder is [tex]9+1=10[/tex] feet away from the building.

We know that the window is 14 feet above ground.

We now have a triangle which we need to find the hypotenuse of.

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10

To find the hypotenuse, we can use the Pythagorean Theorem. This states that [tex]a^2+b^2=c^2[/tex], where a and b are the legs of a triangle and c is the hypotenuse.

The legs are 10 and 14, so lets substitute inside the equation.

[tex]10^2 + 14^2 = c^2\\\\100+196=c^2\\\\296=c^2\\\\c = \sqrt{296}\\\\c \approx 17.2[/tex]

Hope this helped!