How do you find the hypotenuse of a right triangle with legs measuring 5.2 cm and 7.8 cm respectively?

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Answer 1 · 2018-05-09T00:25:16

The length of the hypotenuse is $"9.4 cm"$ .

Use the Pythagorean theorem:

$c^2=a^2+b^2$ ,

where:

$c$ is the hypotenuse, and $a="5.2 cm"$ and $b="7.8 cm"$ .

Plug the given values into the equation.

$c^2=("5.2 cm")^2 + ("7.8 cm")^2$

Simplify.

$c^2="27.04 cm"^2"+ 60.84 cm"^2"$

Simplify.

$c^2="87.88 cm"^2"$

Take the square root of both sides.

$c=sqrt("87.88 cm"^2")$

$c="9.4 cm"$ (rounded to one decimal place)

The length of the hypotenuse is $"9.4 cm"$ .