McGraw Hill Integrated II, 2012
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McGraw Hill Integrated II, 2012 View details
3. Special Right Triangles
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Exercise 51 Page 648

Start by drawing a diagram to illustrate the situation.

B

Practice makes perfect

We are told that a longer leg of a 30^(∘)-60^(∘)-90^(∘) triangle has a length of 5sqrt(3) and we want to find the length of its shorter leg. To do so, we will start by drawing a diagram to illustrate the situation. Let x be the length of the shorter leg of the triangle.

In a 30^(∘)-60^(∘)-90^(∘) triangle, the longer leg is sqrt(3) times the length of the shorter leg.

5sqrt(3)=sqrt(3) * x
5=x
x=5

We found that the length of the shorter leg of the given triangle is 5, which corresponds to answer B.