ShmoopTube

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Here’s an unshmoopy question you’ll find on an exam somewhere in life...

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On a coordinate plane, the points (1, 1), (1, 4), and (5, 4) form the vertices of a right triangle.

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What is the length of the hypotenuse of this triangle?

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And here are the potential answers...

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Ok, so this question wants to make sure we can read a graph…

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and that we know our way around a triangle.

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We are being asked to apply the Pythagorean theorem –

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a squared plus b squared equals c squared.

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And by this cool new technology called… counting… we can get a and b easily.

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So a is 1 2 3 units high… and b is 1 2 3 4 units wide.

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So the equation looks like this:

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3 squared plus 4 squared is c squared.

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We have 9 plus 16 equals 25 which is c squared…

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…so to get c we take the square root of 25 which is 5 and the answer is... A.

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Rhymes with yay.

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