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Pythagorean theorem

Pythagorean theorem

From the course: Test Prep: GRE

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Pythagorean theorem

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- [Voiceover] When we have a right triangle and we want to solve for the lengths of one of the sides or more we can use the Pythagorean Theorem. The Pythagorean Theorem is usually written as a squared plus b squared equals c squared. How does this work? Let's say that one side of this right triangle is three. Let's say this side is four. Let's say we don't know the hypotenuse and we want to solve for it. We can start to plug in. Remember, the hypotenuse is usually called c for this purpose. The side lengths, or the legs of the triangle, are going to be a and b. It doesn't matter which one you call a or b. Let's say that a is three so we'll do three squared and we'll add four squared because the other leg is four. That should give us our hypotenuse squared. If we simplify this, we're going to get nine plus 16 equals c squared. 25 equals c squared. If we root both sides to get rid of the squared, we'll end up with c equals five. There we go. That's how we solve for the hypotenuse. The…

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