Hi,

I have a question around the manipulation of the square roots for isosceles triangles.
In example 1 on the triangles page, the hypotenuse is root2 x length of either of the other sides. As the hyp is geven as 20, i make the answer 20/root 2, yet i know this is wrong as the answer given is very different (and difficult to display here). Could you give me a more detailed run through of the explanation, particularly on how you get from L = (1/root 2) x 20 to the next stage.

Thanks

If the hypotenuse is equal to 20 and it is also equal to sqrt(2) times the length of each side then, we need to set up the following equation

20 = sqrt(2) x where x represents the length of either of the two sides. Now, we just solve for x:

x = 20 / sqrt (2) = 10sqrt(2)

I hope this helps,

Steve