right triangle problem

[rosie]

I have been asked to find the length of the two legs of a right triangle but have only been given the length of the hypotenuse.

Using trial and error I can figure out them out if the length of the hypotonuse is a small number.

There must be a better way to figure this out other than trial and error.

 

[axrw]

Didn't they give you one of the acute angles of the triangle?

 

[rosie]

No...they gave no further info other than they asked that the answer be in radical form.

The question was...if a right triangle has a hypotenuse of 5cm, what are the lengths of the other two legs. Answer in radical form.

Obviously using pythagorean, the answer would be 3 and 4, but I got that just using basic arithmetic and trial and error.

Is there a better way to figure this out?

 

[Denis]

No.

As example, hypotenuse = 25 has legs 7,24 and also 15,20