Melissa has a gerbil that lives in a cage in the shape of a rectangular prism. She wants to put a ramp in the cage to give her gerbil exercise. The cage has a length of 70cm a width of 35cm
To find the necessary length of the ramp, we need to measure the diagonal of the base of the cage.
Using the Pythagorean theorem, we can calculate the length of the diagonal (d) as follows:
d^2 = length^2 + width^2
d^2 = 70^2 + 35^2
d^2 = 4900 + 1225
d^2 = 6125
Taking the square root of both sides, we find:
d ≈ √6125
d ≈ 78.28 cm
Therefore, the ramp needs to be at least 78.28 cm long to reach from one corner of the base to the opposite corner.