Best Buy is selling 55 inch HD TV’s. This measurement is the diagonal distance across the screen. If the screen measures 48 inches in width, what is the actual height of the screen?
Draw a picture:
Solve:
To find the height of the screen, we can use the Pythagorean Theorem since the width and height of the screen form a right triangle.
Let the height of the screen be represented as (h).
Using the Pythagorean Theorem:
(h^2) + (48^2) = (55^2)
h^2 + 2304 = 3025
h^2 = 721
h = sqrt(721)
h ≈ 26.8 inches
Therefore, the actual height of the screen is approximately 26.8 inches.