Jaziel is painting a wall. He has a ladder that is 12 feet long and places the base of the ladder 4 feet from the wall. To the nearest foot, how high does the ladder reach up the wall?
Show all work, answer in a sentence.
Show all work, answer in a sentence.
1 Answer
Mar 4, 2018
The ladder reaches 11 feet up the wall.
Explanation:
The wall is vertical and floor is horizontal, so the corner where they meet is a right angle. When the ladder is placed against the wall, it forms a right triangle. The ladder is its hypotenuse.
Using the Pythagorean theorem, the height of the ladder on the wall is:
