One leg is 12 inches and the hypotenuse is 13 inches. How do you find the missing leg?

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Answer 1 · 2018-03-08T01:59:36

Recall that the sum of the squares of the legs is equal to the square of the hypotenuse in a right triangle

Thus, the square of 13 is equal to the square of 12 plus the square of the missing leg.

We can set up an equation with x as the unknown length.

#x^2+12^2=13^2#

#x^2+144=169#

#x^2=25#

#x=+-5# Disregard the #-5# because a side cannot have a negative length

Thus, the missing side is 5 inches.