Pythagoras

Saturday, February 21, 2009
This post is about a guy named Pythagoras. Pythagoras is an uber smart greek mathematician. Nobody found any evidence that he existed. Before I explain what Pythagoras did, here are the pictures and meanings of these artifacts.


Legs - They are shorter than the hypotenuse and creates the right the angle of the triangle. Each triangle has two legs.

Hypotenuse - It's the longest side of the of the right triangle. It is also across from the right angle.

R.A.T - Right Angle Triangle

Greek - A nation coming from Greece.
Theorem - A formula that can be prooved.

What Pythagoras did was he made a theorem. It was called the Pythegorean Theorem. It is the statement that the sum of the two small squares (a and b) equals the big square (c). All those artifacts are connected to the Pythagorean Theorem. The formula for the theorem is a²+b²=c².





We care about Pythagoras in Grade 8 math because Pythagoras made the formula for the theorem.

Here the two word problems I solved:



The Formula

c²-a²=b²
10²-8²=b²
100-64=b²
36=b²
√36=b
6=b
6x2=12mm


A checkerboard is made of 64 small squares that each have a dimension of 3 cm x 3 cm. The 64 small squares are arranged in eight rows of eight.

a) What is the length of the diagonal of a small square? Give your answer to the nearest tenth of a centimeter.

For this one we have to solve for c. We already know the length and width. They are a and b. Now we just have to use a²+b²=c².




b) What is the length of the diagonal of the board? Give your answer to the nearest tenth of a centimeter?



This is a video of Giselle, Joysielyn, Liem and I explaining the Pythagorean Theorem using squares.






Part 2



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