Quilt squares are cut on the ground to form triangular quilt pieces. The hypotenuse of the resulting triangles is 34 inches long. What is the side length of each piece?
17
17/2
13
34/2
The side length of each piece is 17 inches.
This is because the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the square root of the sum of the squares of the other two sides. In this case, if we let one side be x (the side length of each square piece) and the other side be x/2 (the width of each square piece), we can set up the following equation:
x^2 + (x/2)^2 = 34^2
x^2 + x^2/4 = 1156
4x^2 + x^2 = 4624
5x^2 = 4624
x^2 = 924.8
x = √924.8
x ≈ 30.4
Since the side length of each piece should be a whole number, we round to the nearest whole number. Therefore, the side length of each piece is 30 inches.