Think of a situation where perpendicular lines can be used as a model.
See solution.
Practice makes perfect
Let's create a problem! Yours will be different, but let's go through one together.
Statement of an Application Problem
Mr Brown needs to clean the gutter on his house.
The gutter is 8 feet above the ground and there is a 3.5 feet wide flower bed next to the wall of the house.
What is the minimum length of the ladder that can reach the gutter over the flower bed?
Solution of the Problem
The foot of the ladder needs to be 3.5 feet away from the wall and it needs to reach 8 feet high on the wall.
The ladder, the horizontal flower bed, and the vertical wall form a right triangle.
The length of the two legs are given, and we are asked to find the length of the hypotenuse. The Pythagorean Theorem states the connection between these lengths.
c^2=a^2+b^2
We can substitute the known values in this equation to find the answer to the question.
