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?

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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:

sqrt(12^2 - 4^2) = 11 feet (rounded to the nearest foot)