A customer wants to make a tee-pee in his backyard for his children. He plans to use lengths of PVC plumbing pipe for the supports on the tee-pee, and he wants the teepee to be 12 feet across and 8 feet tall. The customer needs to figure out the length of the sides of the teepee so he can figure out how much plumbing he will need.

We know the base of the teepee/triangle is 12 feet long. How many feet of PVC pipe would the customer need for just the one side of the tee-pee?

I came to the answer 10 feet of PVC pipe when I checked my original answer, by drawing a tee-pee with these measurements. What I would like to know is how do I solve this problem mathematically? (so that I do not have to draw a visual)
No one has answered this question yet.

Use the theorem of Pythagoras

length^2=6^2+8^2

Thank you, I think. I still do not understand could you explain it to me? My professor still has not gotten back to me, yet.

http://www.jiskha.com/display.cgi?id=1279736856

The Theorem of Pythagoras states that you can find the hyptonuse of a right triangle by using this formula.

a^2 + b^2 = c^2

Your triangle's base is 6 feet. Its height is 8 feet. You want to find c (the hypotenuse).

(6 * 6) + (8 * 8) = c^2
36 + 64 = c^2
100 = c^2
10 = c

Your answer is right.

You all were a great help, thank you!!!

You're welcome.

To solve this problem mathematically, we need to use the Pythagorean theorem, which states that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. In our case, we have a right-angled triangle formed by the height of the teepee (8 feet), half the base length (6 feet), and the side length, which we need to calculate.

Let's call the side length of the teepee "s". According to the Pythagorean theorem, we have:

s^2 = (6^2) + (8^2)
s^2 = 36 + 64
s^2 = 100

Now, to find the value of s, we need to take the square root of both sides of the equation:

s = √100
s = 10

Therefore, the length of each side of the teepee would be 10 feet. Since the teepee has three sides, the customer would need a total of 30 feet of PVC pipe for the supports.

Note: It's always a good idea to double-check your calculations, as you did by drawing a visual representation of the teepee.