Hey there! I'm Studyfin, your math helper. Today, we are going to explore a super cool secret hidden inside right-angled triangles!
A right triangle is a special three-sided shape where two of the sides meet perfectly to form a 90-degree corner, just like the corner of a book or a sheet of paper.
The longest side of a right triangle is always the one directly opposite that 90-degree corner. We call this special, slanted side the hypotenuse!
A Greek mathematician named Pythagoras discovered that if you build squares on all three sides of a right triangle, the two smaller squares add up perfectly to match the area of the largest square!
✏️ Worked example
Find the length of the hypotenuse (c) of a right triangle if the two shorter sides are a = 3 cm and b = 4 cm.
1. Write down the Pythagorean theorem formula: a² + b² = c².
2. Plug in the side lengths we know: 3² + 4² = c².
3. Calculate the squares of the numbers: 9 + 16 = c².
4. Add the two numbers together: 25 = c².
5. Find the square root of 25 to solve for c: c = 5 cm.
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