A customer wants to make a tee-pee in his backyard for his children. He plans to use lengths of PVC plumbing pipe for the supports on the tee-pee, and he wants the teepee to be 12 feet across and 8 feet tall. The customer needs to figure out the length of the sides of the teepee so he can figure out how much plumbing he will need.

We know the base of the teepee/triangle is 12 feet long. How many feet of PVC pipe would the customer need for just the one side of the tee-pee?

I came to the answer 10 feet of PVC pipe when I checked my original answer, by drawing a tee-pee with these measurements. What I would like to know is how do I solve this problem mathematically? (so that I do not have to draw a visual)

4 answers

A customer wants to make a tee-pee in his backyard for his children. He plans to use lengths of PVC plumbing pipe for the supports on the tee-pee, and he wants the teepee to be 12 feet across and 8 feet tall. The customer needs to figure out the length of the sides of the teepee so he can figure out how much plumbing he will need.

We know the base of the teepee/triangle is 12 feet long. How many feet of PVC pipe would the customer need for just the one side of the tee-pee?

I came to the answer 10 feet of PVC pipe when I checked my original answer, by drawing a tee-pee with these measurements. What I would like to know is how do I solve this problem mathematically? (so that I do not have to draw a visual)
ooops
The length of each side is the hyppotenuse of a right-angled triangle with base of 6 and height of 8
so
h^2 = 6^2 + 8^2
= 36 + 64
= 100
h = √100 = 10
Thank you! =0)