The length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is 13 centimeters and the length of one of the legs is 12 centimeters.find the number of centimeters in the length of the second leg
we can use the Pythagorean theorem ( [tex]a^{2} + b^{2} = c^{2} [/tex] ) , where a and b are the length of each of the two legs, and c is the length of the hypotenuse
[tex]12^{2} + b^{2} = 13^{2}[/tex] [tex]b^{2} = 169 - 144
b^{2} = 25
\sqrt{b^{2} } = \sqrt{25} b = 5[/tex] the length is 5cm
