Sylvia is replacing a piece of siding on her house. To make the 12 ft. ladder stable, the bottom of the ladder needs to be 6 ft. from the base of her house. Applying the Pythagorean Theorem and rounding to the nearest tenth, how high will the ladder reach so that Sylvia can replace the siding?(1 point)

Responses

10.4 ft.
10.4 ft.

13.4 ft.
13.4 ft.

108 ft.
108 ft.

180 ft.

1 answer

To solve this problem, we can use the Pythagorean theorem, which states that in a right triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse (the longest side) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

Let's call the height that the ladder reaches "h". The base of the ladder is 6 ft and the length of the ladder (the hypotenuse) is 12 ft.

Using the Pythagorean theorem, we have:

6^2 + h^2 = 12^2
36 + h^2 = 144
h^2 = 144 - 36
h^2 = 108

To find the height, we take the square root of both sides:

√(h^2) = √108
h ≈ 10.4 ft

Therefore, the ladder will reach a height of approximately 10.4 ft.