Problem:
A flagpole is originally meters tall. A hurricane snaps the flagpole at a point meters above the ground so that the upper part, still attached to the stump, touches the ground meter away from the base. What is ?
Answer Choices:
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Solution:
Let be the height of the stump. Then is the height of the snapped part, now forming the hypotenuse of a right triangle. By the Pythagorean Theorem,
from which .
The problems on this page are the property of the MAA's American Mathematics Competitions