Question

a piece of wire measuring 20 feet is attached to a telephone pole as a guy wire. the distance along the ground from the bottom of the pole to the end of the wire is 4 feet greater than the height where the wire is attached to the pole. how far up the pole does the guy wire reach?

Answer 1

The guy wire, the telephone phone and the ground form a right-angled triangle.
Your measurements are x, x+4, and 20.
To solve for x, you could use the Pythagorean Theorem, a^2+b^2=c^2.

Let a=x
Let b=x+4
Let c=20

First, plug in the values for a, b and c, and then simplify.

From here, solve for x by either factoring, or using the quadratic formula (I'm going to use the quadratic formula).

Now, plug in the values of x into the original formula

The measurement of the telephone pole is x.
My values of x are 12 and -16.
If we substitute the values of x in,
only x=12 makes sense,
because a telephone pole with height -16 is impossible
hope it helps.