Sara was helping her father assemble a slide for the local park. He decides to reinforce the slide with an extra support beam. How long should the extra support beam be? (Image included)

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1 Answer
Parabola
Nov 30, 2017

76.25cm

Explanation:

In the picture, we see two right triangles. The larger one has sides #122,195#, and #152#. The smaller one has sides #x, 152-57#, and the unknown hypotenuse.
We know these triangles are similar, since they both share a right angle and the corresponding angle across the right angle.

We also know the base of the smaller right triangle. We do the subtraction of #152-57# to find out that the base of the smaller right triangle is #95cm#

We can know find the ratio between the bottom base of the two right triangles.
Therefore, #95/152=x/122#
Solving this equation, we get:
#95/152=x/122#
#11590=152x#
#76.25=x#
We have the answer!

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