Suppose a spider was able to create one thread that would extend from the top-right back corner of its tank to the bottom-left front corner. Approximately how long would that thread need to be for the tank below? The path of the spider's thread is shown with a red dotted line. Round your answer to the nearest tenth of an inch.

Question

Suppose a spider was able to create one thread that would extend from the top-right back corner of its tank to the bottom-left front corner.  Approximately how long would that thread need to be for the tank below?  The path of the spider's thread is shown with a red dotted line.  Round your answer to the nearest tenth of an inch.
12in 35in 16in
 The diagonal of the bottom of the tank is 
 inches.  To the nearest tenth of an inch, the length of the spider's thread is 
 inches.

GPT 3.5 · Answer

To find the diagonal of the bottom of the tank, we can use the Pythagorean theorem. The two sides of the tank forming the bottom are 12in and 35in.

Using the Pythagorean theorem, we can calculate the length of the diagonal:

diagonal^2 = 12^2 + 35^2
diagonal^2 = 144 + 1225
diagonal^2 = 1369
diagonal = √1369
diagonal ≈ 37in (rounded to the nearest whole inch)

The length of the spider's thread would need to be approximately equal to the length of the tank's diagonal, which is approximately 37in. We round this to the nearest tenth of an inch, which gives us 37.0in.