How do you find the missing side of a right triangle given: b=24, c=26?

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Answer 1 · 2016-12-21T20:14:18

$a =10$

Assuming that the sides are $a, b, c$ with $c$ being the hypotenuse, we can use the pythagorean triples to find the third and shortest side.

Some of the common triples and their multiples are:

$3:4:5rarr" "6:8:10" "9:12:15" "12:16:20$
$5:12:13rarr" "color(red)(10:24:26)" "15:36:39$
$7:24:25rarr" "14:48:50$
$8:15:17rarr" "16:30:34$

$color(red)(10:24:26)$ is what we want. The third side is $10$

We could also calculate the unknown side

$a^2 = 26^2-24^2$

$a^2 = 676 - 576 = 100$

$a = sqrt100 = 10$