Pearson Geometry Common Core, 2011
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Pearson Geometry Common Core, 2011 View details
5. Proportions in Triangles
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Exercise 56 Page 478

You will need to use the Right Triangle Altitude Theorem — or one of its corollaries — to write proportions using the side lengths of similar right triangles.

m/b=b/c

Practice makes perfect

Let's analyze the given figure.

We are asked to use this figure to complete a proportion.

■/b=b/c Since we are given a right triangle, we can use a corollary of the Right Triangle Altitude Theorem, which discusses the similar right triangles inside every right triangle.

Let's compare the theorem's corollary to the known segment names of our figure. ■/AC=AC/AB ⇔ ■/b=b/c In our case, с is the length of the hypotenuse and b is the length of one side of the given triangle. We can complete our proportion using the length of the partial segment that is adjacent to b. Looking at the given figure, we can see that this length is m.

Let's complete the given proportion! m/b=b/c