All ACT Math Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #1 : 45/45/90 Right Isosceles Triangles
What is the area of an isosceles right triangle with a hypotenuse of ?
Now, this is really your standard triangle. Since it is a right triangle, you know that you have at least one -degree angle. The other two angles must each be degrees, because the triangle is isosceles.
Based on the description of your triangle, you can draw the following figure:
This is derived from your reference triangle for the triangle:
For our triangle, we could call one of the legs . We know, then:
Thus, .
The area of your triangle is:
For your data, this is:
Example Question #1 : Isosceles Triangles
What is the area of an isosceles right triangle with a hypotenuse of ?
Now, this is really your standard triangle. Since it is a right triangle, you know that you have at least one -degree angle. The other two angles must each be degrees because the triangle is isosceles.
Based on the description of your triangle, you can draw the following figure:
This is derived from your reference triangle for the triangle:
For our triangle, we could call one of the legs . We know, then:
Thus, .
The area of your triangle is:
For your data, this is:
Example Question #2 : 45/45/90 Right Isosceles Triangles
What is the area of an isosceles right triangle with a hypotenuse of ?
Now, this is really your standard triangle. Since it is a right triangle, you know that you have at least one -degree angle. The other two angles must each be degrees because the triangle is isosceles.
Based on the description of your triangle, you can draw the following figure:
This is derived from your reference triangle for the triangle:
For our triangle, we could call one of the legs . We know, then:
Thus, .
The area of your triangle is:
For your data, this is:
Example Question #4 : How To Find The Area Of A 45/45/90 Right Isosceles Triangle
is a right isosceles triangle with hypotenuse . What is the area of ?
Right isosceles triangles (also called "45-45-90 right triangles") are special shapes. In a plane, they are exactly half of a square, and their sides can therefore be expressed as a ratio equal to the sides of a square and the square's diagonal:
, where is the hypotenuse.
In this case, maps to , so to find the length of a side (so we can use the triangle area formula), just divide the hypotenuse by :
So, each side of the triangle is long. Now, just follow your formula for area of a triangle:
Thus, the triangle has an area of .
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