Oh snap, I posted that post before I saw ubertuna's new post. If he can't even solve it then I'm pretty positive that I'm wrong. Also is this like college math? Oh, and Carlie I'm just plain wrong and confused right now so I'm going to stop trying problems that are out of my league.
the height of the buildings is irrelevent. As far as we are concerned, they are infinitely tall. What matters is how high up the buildings the tops of the ladders are positioned, which we don't know.
I\\ I \\ I \\/ I I /\\ I I / \\ I I/__ \\I
I couldn't get lines of different angles so assume that the one that slants down-up left-right is connected with the wall.
down-up left-right is 20 units up-down left-right is 30 units
ok nick, it's a hard problem. and carlie, is there any waay to post images on here that are from my computer but not from the web? if so I could scan the papers with my work on this and post them.
How can it be a right angle? Are we assuming that the ladders go from the top of one, straight to the base of the other? Even then, we should not have right angles.
no, the buildings are at right angles to the ground. the ladders go from the bases of the buildings to unkown points on the sides of the opposite buildings. you can look at it as forming two right triangle with X as one side, a ladder as another, and the building as the third, or it can be seen as two similar triangles with the buildings as one set of sides and peices of the ladder, segmented at the intersection point, as the other two.
But if the ladders cross over, then it does not actually make a right triangle with the ground. It would be a right angle, but not a right triangle because the ladders would interrupt the perfect triangle.
I am finding it hard to follow what you are trying to say, are you thinking about this as a two dimensional or three dimensional problem? I'll try to find something that is a good representation of this on google.
