Suppose a ladder 60 feet long is placed in a street so as to reach a window on one side 37 feet high.
Without moving the bottom of the ladder, it will reach another window on the other side of the street which is 23 feet high.
How wide is the street?
Solution to the Problem:
The width of the street is approximately 102.65 feet across.
The diagram below shows that we can find the width of the street by applying the Pythagorean theorem twice to find the distances from the bottom of the ladder to the sides of the street and then adding the distances together.
So, the width of the street is 47.233 + 55.4166 = 102.65 feet
Correctly solved by:
| 1. Colin (Yowie) Bowey | Beechworth, Victoria, Australia |
| 2. Davit Banana | Istanbul, Turkey |
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3. Calvin Fortson Parker Cavanna David Austin Julene Gilmore |
Hinsdale High School, Hinsdale, New Hampshire |
| 4. Aayan Shah | Lalitpur City, Nepal |
| 5. Brijesh Dave | Mumbai City, Maharashtra, India |
| 6. Dr. Hari Kishan |
D.N. College, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India |
| 7. Ritwik Chaudhuri | Santiniketan, West Bengal, India |