A square is cut on the diagonal to form 2 right triangles. The hypotenuse of the resulting triangles is 20 inches long. What is the length of each of the sides?

Answer 1

Let the side length of the square be denoted by s.
Since the square is cut on the diagonal, the hypotenuse of each right triangle is s inches long.
According to the Pythagorean theorem, in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Therefore, we have:
s^2 + s^2 = 20^2
2s^2 = 400
Dividing both sides by 2, we get:
s^2 = 200
Taking the square root of both sides, we have:
s = √200 = 10√2
Thus, the length of each side of the square is 10√2 inches.