2009 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 10

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Problem

A flagpole is originally $5$ meters tall. A hurricane snaps the flagpole at a point $x$ meters above the ground so that the upper part, still attached to the stump, touches the ground $1$ meter away from the base. What is $x$ ?

$\text{(A) } 2.0\qquad\text{(B) } 2.1\qquad\text{(C) } 2.2\qquad\text{(D) } 2.3\qquad\text{(E) } 2.4$

Solution

The broken flagpole forms a right triangle with legs $1$ and $x$ , and hypotenuse $5-x$ . The Pythagorean theorem now states that $1^2 + x^2 = (5-x)^2$ , hence $10x = 24$ , and $x=\boxed{2.4}$ .

(Note that the resulting triangle is the well-known $5-12-13$ right triangle, scaled by $1/5$ .)

2009 AMC 10B (Problems • Resources)
Preceded by Problem 9	Followed by Problem 11
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25

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2009 AMC 10B Problems/Problem 10

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