Question

You wish to zip from the top of the school to your bus. The school is 40 feet tall and the bus is 56 feet. What is the length of the rope you'll need for the zip line?

Answer 1

Approximately 68.8 feet or 68 feet and 10 inches of rope.

Explanation:

We can create a right triangle from the information given. We know the school is 40 feet tall, so we have one leg (the vertical leg) as 40 feet.

Next, we know the bus is 56 feet away, so we have the base leg (or the horizontal leg) as 56 feet.

To determine the length of rope needed for the zip-line, all we have to do is find the hypotenuse, or the longest side (the diagonal between the ground and the school in this case).

We do this by using Pythagorean's Theorem, which states that for any right triangle:

`a^2 + b^2 = c^2`

Where a and b are leg lengths, while c is the hypotenuse.

So we plug everything into Pythagorean's Theorem to get our answer:

`40^2 + 56^2 = c^2`
`4736 = c^2`
`c ~~ 68.8`

So we will need approximately 68.8 feet, or 68 feet and 10 inches of rope.