How can you simplify calculations of segments in a coordinate plane?
See solution.
Practice makes perfect
When you place the triangle on the grid, with one vertice at the origin and two or more of its sides along the axis, it simplifies your calculations in two ways:
Having a vertex at the origin, (0,0).
When a triangle's side runs along an axis, the side will be either vertical or horizontal. To calculate the length of such sides, we do not have to use the Distance Formula.
For the given example, the vertical side is b units and the horizontal side is a units.
