What Is, And The Formula For The Pythagorean Theorem Explained - How To Find The Hypotenuse
In this video we discuss what is, and how to use the Pythagorean theorem for right triangles. We go through a couple of examples using the formula to find the unknown length of the hypotenuse.
Transcript/notes
The formula for the Pythagorean theorem is c squared equals a squared plus b squared. In this formula, c is the length of the hypotenuse, or the side opposite the 90 degree angle in a triangle. And a and b would be the length of the sides that connect to form the 90 degree angle in a triangle, which are often referred to as legs.
So, the Pythagorean theorem only applies to triangles that have a 90 degree angle in them, which is called a right triangle.
As an example, let’s say that we are given the right triangle with the legs of length 8 and 7. What is the length of the hypotenuse?
Using our formula of c squared equals a squared plus b squared, we can assign a as length 8 and b as length 7 and c as the hypotenuse. So, we have c squared equals 8 squared plus 7 squared. 8 squared equals 64 and 7 squared equals 49, and 64 plus 49 equals 113. So, we have c squared equals 113. To solve this we can take the square root of both sides, the square root of c squared equals just c, and the square root of 113 equals 10.63 rounded off. And c, or the length of the hypotenuse, equals 10.63.
And, one note, when assigning the lengths of the legs it doesn’t matter which length you assign to a or b.
Here are a couple more examples of finding the value of the hypotenuse using the Pythagorean theorem for a right triangle.
Timestamps
0:00 Formula For Pythagorean theorem
0:27 Example using the Pythagorean theorem
1:27 Assigning the values of sides A and B
