what is the area of the triangle 39.0, 23.4 and 31.2 ?
There are a couple of ways to tackle this problem. We could determine
all the angles and figure out the length of a line dropped from one of
the corners to the opposite side. Then, we could calculate the area of
each of the two right-triangles formed and add them. However, what if we
already have a right-triangle? All we would need to do is calculate its
area and we would be done.
If this is a right-triangle, the longest side must be the hypotenuse. We
have a formula for finding the length of the hypotenuse. We can use that
because we have all three lengths.
a = 23.4
b = 31.2
c = 39.0
c^2 = a^2 + b^2
39^2 = 23.4^2 + 31.2^2
1521 = 547.56 + 973.44
1521 = 1521
Yes, this is a right-triangle. We can use the formual A = (1/2)bh.
A = (1/2) * 23.4 * 31.2
A = (1/2) * 730.08
A = 365.04