What is the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle if the two other sides are of lengths 13 and 2?

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Answer 1 · 2018-03-14T15:38:06

The hypotenuse is #sqrt(173)#

For a right triangle, The Pythagorean Theorem states that the "square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides"

In algebraic terms, if your two sides are sides "A" and "B", and your hypotenuse is side "C":

#A^2+B^2=C^2#

The problem statement gives us the lengths of the two Non-Hypotenuse sides, defining A & B. Plugging those into our equation:

#13^2+2^2=C^2 rArr 169+4= 173=C^2#

Now that we know the value of #C^2#, we can take the square root of both sides to get our answer:

#sqrt(C^2)=sqrt(173)#

#C=sqrt(173)#

We will leave the radical in place for the solution since there are no interger roots of the number.