A triangle has sides of length 12 and 16 how long the hypotenuse?

Answer 1

To find the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle, we can use the Pythagorean theorem, which states that in a right triangle, the hypotenuse squared is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

Let's use "a" and "b" to represent the lengths of the two sides: Since we are given the sides of length 12 and 16, we can assign them as follows:
a = 12
b = 16

Using the Pythagorean theorem, we can calculate the length of the hypotenuse (c) as follows:

c² = a² + b²
c² = 12² + 16²
c² = 144 + 256
c² = 400

To find the length of the hypotenuse, we can take the square root of both sides of the equation:

c = √400
c = 20

Therefore, the length of the hypotenuse is 20 units.