Friday, March 14, 2008

David's Pythagoras Growing Post

Part One:

The Pythagorean Triple!?!?
The pythagorean triple is when you have 2 perfect squares equal another perfect square, the formula for this is A squared + B squared = C squared.
A and B are the legs on the triangle like shown in the picture. A and B when added would = the hypotenuse which is C. The first perfect square is 3 squared + 4 squared = 5 squared, its true because 3 squared is 9, 4 squared is 16 and 5 squared is 25, 9 + 16 = 25!
Another pythagorean triple would be 6 squared + 8 squared = 10 squared because those are all perfect squares and 6 squared(36) + 8 squared(64) = 10 squared (100).


This picture probably explained things better than me.
Basically, a squared + b squared = c squared is the formula the triangle follows with a and b as the legs, and c as the hypotenuse. The pythagorean triple is just that and it uses perfect squares so theres no decimals or anything which makes it a lot easier.

Part Two:



Voicethread about finding the missing side. Enjoy!







Part Three:


The question I chose to solve, was the Bonus Question.

BONUS QUESTION

Mr. H. jumped into a canoe on the North bank of a river that is 20m wide. He crossed to the South side. When he got to the other side, he discovered that the current carried him 8 m West. How far did he travel in total?


So I took the information that I needed from the question, and drew a picture so I didn't have to think as much and have a pictorial representation of the question.


Then I listed the information that was given, a=20, b=8, and c=?. After that, I put in the theorem, a squared + b squared = c squared, then filled in what a and b were but left c blank because I don't know what it is yet. I then squared 20 and 8 and made them 400 and 64, then just added. I got 464 from that, and now I need to find the square root of it so I used the "mullet" strategy. With that i got 21 23/43 = c, and then made it into a decimal to the nearest hundredth. So Mr. H traveled 21.53m in total.


Part Four:


The Jump!

Your running down a road one day just having fun, when all of the sudden you get to a hole! The hole is 9 feet long, and you have to jump it because there are wild animals like savage rabbits and crazy pigs coming from behind you! Now the road on the other side of the hole is different, the road is 3 feet higher than the road your on right now with all of the animals coming at you. The hole is 19 feet down and it has a river running through down there and sharks and rocks and...other stuff. How many feet will you jump in total to get to safety on the other side of the road where there are people with big pointy sticks ready to hit something?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good Job David! (as always) i like how you show your work.