Given a right triangle ABC with right angle at C, if a is 4 and c is 8, what is b?

Question

Given a right triangle ABC with right angle at C, if a is 4 and c is 8, what is b?

1 Answer

Impact of this question

5305 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2015-11-13T00:31:13

$b = 4 \sqrt{3} \approx 6.928$ $b=4 sqrt(3) approx 6.928$

Explanation:

Assuming that $a$ $a$ is the side opposed to the vertex $A$ $A$ , $b$ $b$ is the side opposed to the vertex $B$ $B$ and $c$ $c$ is the side opposed to the vertex $C$ $C$ , we have that the hypotenuse is $c = 8$ $c=8$ and $a = 4$ $a=4$ is one of the two legs.

Then you can use the Pythagorean Theorem as follows:
$b = \sqrt{c^{2} - a^{2}} = \sqrt{8^{2} - 4^{2}} = \sqrt{64 - 16} = \sqrt{48} = \sqrt{16 \cdot 3} = 4 \sqrt{3} \approx 6.928$ $b=sqrt(c^2-a^2)=sqrt(8^2-4^2)=sqrt(64-16)=sqrt(48)=sqrt(16 * 3)=4 sqrt(3) approx 6.928$

Science

Math

Humanities

... and beyond

Given a right triangle ABC with right angle at C, if a is 4 and c is 8, what is b?

1 Answer

Explanation:

Related questions

Impact of this question