A quilt is covered in pinwheel designs formed by congruent right isosceles triangles. Each pinwheel measures 10 inches from top to bottom, as shown.

The pinwheel is formed by eight congruent right isosceles triangles that all share a vertex in the center of the design. The total height of 10 inches is formed by two hypotenuses of the triangles.

Use the drop-down menus to complete the statements below.

Each triangle in the design is a Query 1
right triangle.
Because the length of the hypotenuse of each triangle is 5 inches long, the legs of each triangle are Query 2
inches long.

1 answer

To solve the problem, we need to analyze the relationship between the hypotenuse and the legs of the right isosceles triangles in the pinwheel design.

  1. Understanding the right isosceles triangle: In a right isosceles triangle, the two legs are the same length, and the relationship between the legs and the hypotenuse is given by the Pythagorean theorem: \[ c = \sqrt{a^2 + a^2} = a\sqrt{2} \] where \( c \) is the hypotenuse and \( a \) is the length of each leg.

  2. Given information: Each triangle has a hypotenuse of 5 inches.

  3. Finding the legs:

    • Using the relationship we derived: \[ 5 = a\sqrt{2} \]
    • Solving for \( a \): \[ a = \frac{5}{\sqrt{2}} = \frac{5\sqrt{2}}{2} \]
    • This value approximates to about \( 3.54 \) inches when calculated, but we will leave it in the exact form for select purposes.

Now we can fill in the blanks:

  1. Query 1: Each triangle in the design is a right triangle.
  2. Query 2: The legs of each triangle are \(\frac{5\sqrt{2}}{2}\) inches long. If asked for a decimal result, you could alternatively provide that as approximately 3.54 inches.

Thus the final statements will be:

  • Each triangle in the design is a right triangle.
  • Because the length of the hypotenuse of each triangle is 5 inches long, the legs of each triangle are approximately 3.54 inches long (or left as \(\frac{5\sqrt{2}}{2}\) for an exact value).