Big Ideas Math: Modeling Real Life, Grade 8
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Big Ideas Math: Modeling Real Life, Grade 8 View details
4. Using Similar Triangles
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Exercise 10 Page 127

Start by finding one of the missing angle measures.

No, see solution.

Practice makes perfect

We want to determine whether the given triangles are similar.

triangles
We will start by finding the missing angle in the left triangle. By the Triangle Angle Sum Theorem, we know that the sum of the measures of the three interior angles of a triangle equals 180^(∘). We can use this to write an equation that we can solve to find the missing angle measure.
36^(∘)+72^(∘)+x^(∘)=180^(∘)
108^(∘)+x^(∘)=180^(∘)
x^(∘)=72^(∘)
We found that x= 72. Let's add this value to our diagram.
triangles

Finally, recall that when two angles in one triangle are congruent to two angles in another triangle, the third angles are also congruent and the triangles are similar. We can see in the diagram that the triangles do not have two pairs of congruent angles. Therefore, the triangles are not similar.