To find the area of a right triangle, calculate half of the product of the base and the height.
B
Practice makes perfect
We are asked to find the area of a right triangle whose side lengths are 10, 24, and 26 inches. Let's begin by drawing the diagram. Recall that in a right triangle the longest side — in this case 26 inches — is always the hypotenuse.
The area of a triangle is half the product of its base and its height. The height is the altitude perpendicular to whichever side is being used as the base.
In the given triangle, we can see that the base is 10 inches and that the height is 24 inches We can substitute these two values into the formula for the area of a triangle and then simplify.
