Kelly is cleaning the windows on the outside of her two-story house. To clean the windows on the first floor, she uses a ladder that is 10 feet long. The ladder is placed on flat ground 6 feet from the house. Kelly keeps this same ratio and uses a 25-foot ladder to reach the second floor windows. What is the vertical distance from the top of the ladder on the second floor to the ground?
How do they get this?
- Thread starter stocks301
- Start date
Draw a sketch. Use similar right triangles.
The 2nd ladder is 2.5 times longer than the 1st one.
All distances - flat on the ground and high up the wall - will increase by the same factor.
So 15?
That's OK for the horizontal distance on the ground. The question asks also for the vertical distance along the wall of the house.
Determine the vertical distance with the short ladder using Pythagorean theorem and then with the long ladder
