Gallery of
Pythagorean Theorem Problems Enjoy our
gallery of 24 customizable problems. A mixed up answer bank is provided
at the end. Substitute the
names of friends to make the problems funny.
1.)
was interviewing for a job as a financial advisor to a union of
truck drivers These truck drivers drove frozen chicken parts all
around the country,
and they just didn't have the time to determine appropriate investment
strategies. They needed a girl who was spunky and great with math.
said, "I'm your gal. I'll do a terrific job for you."
Henry, the head trucker
was impressed with
so he said, "Answer this one question correctly, and the job
is yours. What 2 possible numbers, rounded to the nearest whole
number, could complete this 'Pythagorean Triple'? 37, 25, _____ or _____
3.)
is taking his SAT test in hopes of scoring high enough to get into
the famous College of Modern Cheffery. Yes, he wants to be
a Chef of the modern variety. He will be serving up kelp soup, soybean
bread, and all kinds of organically responsible appetizers.
Here is the question
the question bothering him at the moment. Find the length of the
missing leg exactly.
5.)
has a Pythagorean problem. You see he is planning a big bonfire,/campout
on his pig farm.
He wants to invite Jenna, Kelly, Brittany, and Jessica as well as
Luke, Jim, and Matt.
The problem is that the
girls' parents won't let them attend unless they have their own
tent. Well
found an extra tent in his root cellar. It only has a little bit
of mold on it, but it smells like old pig feet. He needs to get
it set up and aired out before the party, but the support stick
is missing. If the tent is 78 inches on the bottom and 42 inches
on each side, to the nearest inch, how tall of a stick does he need
to find?
7.)
is in training for the great Appalachian Mid Winter Lake Swimming
Contest. It takes place every February 15th. For extra warmth, contestants
grease their naked bodies with a thick coat of chicken fat before
putting on their swim suits. Then they jump into the freezing waters
of lake Fingerfoo and swim their little hearts out. The winner gets
$100 and an all you can eat dinner at Alice's Corn Pone Palace
of Grits.
To train,
swims across his pool diagonally every day. If his pool is 4 meters
wide, and it's 16 meters diagonally across, how long is his pool
to the nearest meter?
9.)
is a famous math comedian for genius nerds. Her audiences have included
gifted 14 year olds at MIT and Harvard, as well as an underground
techno, hacker, club in downtown Cleveland.
One
night a particularly odious twelve year old at the hacker club tried
to hit on her. He said, "Hey hot mamma, you're obviously in
need of my tangent to your curve. How would you affirm a union of
our presently, mutually exclusive sets?"
To this
replied, "I'll union my curve with your tangent if my age is
less than or equal to yours. To find my age, find the hypotenuse
on a right triangle to the nearest whole year, if its legs are SQRT(98)
and SQRT(150).
11.)
is a designer of portable computer screens. He is trying to design
a computer screen that will fit in a woman's purse. That way she
can have full computer functionality while on the go.
Imagine, she can design
a web page or crunch numbers in a spreadsheet while in the ladies
restroom at a restaurant.
His current design is
3/4 of a foot long and 1/2 foot wide. What will the EXACT
measurement of the diagonal on this screen be. Leave your answer
as a fraction in lowest,exact, terms.
13.)
needs a miracle. You see she met this guy from Bosnia named Ahmed
on the Internet. He sent her his picture, and he turned out to be
a babe. Well to make a long story short, they kinda have a virtual
thing going. His family is willing to pay her airfare so that she
can go and visit him this summer.
Now
dad doesn't want her to go, but he is afraid to make her mad, so
he makes what he believes will be a no win deal. He tells her that
she can go if she gets an 'A' in math the last quarter. Considering
that
has never gotten anything higher than a 'D' in the last three quarters,
he feels it is a safe bet.
What her dad doesn't
know is that Ahmed has been tutoring her in math over the Internet
each evening. She is taking the last test of the year. She is on
the last question. If she gets this one correct, she will have her
'A'. Here is the question.
Do the numbers 8, 10, 6 form a Pythagorean triple?
15.)
designs playgrounds for little kids.
He is doing one now in the shape of a right triangle. It needs to
be skinny because it has to fit in a rat infested alleyway between
two old buildings. The hypotenuse is 794 inches and the short leg
is 156 inches. To the nearest inch, how much fencing does
have to order to keep those rats out of the playground.
17.)
is a disgruntled postal worker. She has simply had it up to her
eyeballs with the stupid antics of the men in her mailroom. They
are always doing things that she finds distasteful, like leaving
rubber dog regurgitation on the lunch table right before she sits
down, or passing around pictures of semi-clothed, voluptuous, females
and drawing mustaches on them. They even have the nerve to visit
"adult" Internet sites during their breaks when everyone
knows that the computer is only to be used for tracking lost packages.
decides to play a trick of her own. No one in the mailroom knows
that she is a math/computer whiz, so they'll never figure out it
was her who did it. She puts a sophisticated entry password on the
computer. The password is a question:
If two legs of a right
triangle measure SQRT(90) and SQRT(40), what is the exact length
of the hypotenuse.
19.)
is a queen mud wrestler. She makes big bucks each evening slithering
around in the mud and slamming the pretty faces of her opponents
into the brown slimy goo. Usually everyone ends up laughing and
having a good time no matter who wins. But
wins most of the time.
Well last night she had
a bit of a turnaround. She was wrestling a new woman from down south
by the name of Big Bottom Bertha. Now Big Bottom pulled a move on
that took her by surprise. She threw a handful of sand in
eyes right as they rang the bell to start the match. Well this naturally
blinded her, and she was then at the mercy of Big Bertha. The match
was over almost as soon as it started.
The next morning when
awoke, she couldn't see. She screamed in terror. Her eyes were all
encrusted shut, and the pain was intense. Her mother rushed her
to the hospital where their top opthamologist, Dr.
, examined her eyes. He found 15 tiny rips on her cornea. The largest
was in the shape of a right triangle.
If the two shorter sides
were 0.025m and 0.01m, how long was the longest side to the nearest
thousandth of a meter?
21.)
runs the controls for a 20 foot tall, electronic Santa display. To
keep old Kris Kringle anchored safely, he uses a 24 foot long steel
cable attached to the top of Santa's head and bolted in a straight
line to the floor. To the nearest tenth of a foot, how far away from
Santa's feet is the cable?
23.)
has worked her way up to the top ranks of "Who Wants to be
a MILLIONAIRE?". She is on the million dollar round, and everyone
in the nation is waiting to see if this little 15 year old from
farm country, with the fantastic IQ, is going to break the bank.
She is so nervous that
sweat drips from her eyebrows. Her mom and dad are in the audience
as well has her boyfriend Marvin. Everyone else is watching from
home. Here it comes,... the last question for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
The hypotenuse of an
isosceles, (2 legs the same length), right triangle is SQRT(50)
units long. How long is each leg?
2.)
had a bit of a problem. He was trying to make the moves on this
cute chick in his study hall. She
was in a grade lower, and she looked up to him as the dashing, OLDER,
UPPERCLASSMAN that he was. She was almost afraid to talk to him
for fear he would ignore her. Naturally, she thought he must know
much more than her, because he was in a higher grade. So one day
she got up enough nerve to ask him, "Can you help me with my
math?"
was overjoyed. The hottie was speaking to him! "Sure,"
he said with confidence.
She smiled at him in
a sexy manner and said,"GREAT! Here's the problem. Use the
Pythagorean Theorem to find c, to the nearest tenth, if a=17
and b = 20."
Can
do it? The future of his love life rests in the answer to a MATH
problem.
4.)
is training to be an Amazon Jungle tour guide. As part of her training,
she must climb a slanted rope net into a tree that is 45 feet high.
To the nearest hundredth of a foot, how far away from the tree does
is the net anchored if the net is 100 feet long?
6.)
works for the All Famous Flying Lizards Circus. He designs the ramps
that the lizards run down in preparation for flight. He must be
very precise in his measurements. Each lizard in the company has
its own "ramp of flight" that has been designed for their
body weight and length.
The circus just spent
$3,000 to purchase the rare Komodo Dragon, Orange Speckled, Gecko
lizard named Frank. Frank is 4 feet long and weighs 49.5 pounds.
He will need a ramp 12.5 feet high with a base 20.923 feet long.To
the nearest thousandth of a foot, how long will the ramp be.
8.)
is a geometry teacher in an inner city school in Chicago. His classes
just finished a unit on the Pythagorean Theorem. The test is tomorrow,
and he is trying to review with the kids.
The class is all rowdy
today. No one is paying attention. Every time
tries to start a new problem, Jackson or Marcus, or Kyle pass gas
or belch loud enough for the whole class to hear. This causes roars
of laughter, and as a result, not much is being done.
pulls the three boys out into the hall and tells them that he is
going to make a special test for them with only one question. Here
it is:
Do the numbers, seventeen, the square root of twenty five, and sixteen
form a Pythagorean Triple?
10.) Well good old
is out on the sand dunes hang gliding again. She loves the feeling
she gets when she is flying. It's like the whole world is a little
toy beneath her.
She has her own glider.
It was specially hand built and designed by a certain geometry teacher
friend of hers in Chicago named
. She calls it the TOYMAKER.
On her last flight she
jumped off a cliff and traveled in a diagonal line for 500 feet
before landing 450 feet from the base of the cliff. How high was
the cliff to the nearest ten feet?
12.)
is building a dollhouse for his mother's birthday. It has three
floors and 12 rooms. He has been careful to use her favorite colors
of powder pink and robin's egg blue.
He is ready to build
the roof. Find the height of the roof to the nearest millionth of
an inch if the house is 26 inches across and the slanted side is
15 inches long as shown below.
14.)
is a famous artist.
She has a reputation for producing beautiful murals. She likes to
incorporate objects made of gold into each of her pieces as her
distinct trademark.
The local retirement
home has hired her to paint a mural of the four seasons. They have
asked her to make it as cheerful and realistic as possible since
some of the older folks can't get outside anymore.
She decides upon a 5
foot by 9 foot rectangle cut into four pieces by its two diagonals.
She will use 24 Karat gold leaf tape for the diagonals so they glisten
in the light and give a warm sunny feeling to the whole mural.
This tape is rather expensive
though so she needs to know to the nearest tenth of a foot how much
to buy for both diagonals.
16.)
trains hamsters
to climb mole hills in the Lower Slewbobia Annual Rodent Olympics.
Winners get medals and a year's supply of cedar chips.
has constructed a deluxe ramp for his hamster Dixon. The dimensions
are drawn below. EXACTLY how high is the ramp?
18.)
is in a burning building. She has her head out the window, and she
is screaming at the top of her lungs while holding onto her pet
Rotweiler Fuzzy.
The young, handsome,
fireman,
hears her cries and races to her rescue. He places a ten foot long
ladder three feet away from the bottom of her building, and it reaches
directly up to her window. He climbs up and reaches for
. Fuzzy doesn't like this, and he lunges for fireman
neck. He falls to the ground from the top of the ladder. How far
does he fall to the nearest ten thousandth of a foot.
20.)
is a mathematical genius, and he is sitting in an airport bored
out of his mind. His flight has been delayed and he has already
booked his luggage. The luggage had all of his reading material
in it. He doesn't like the mindless magazines that are laying around
the airport, and watching television is simply too much of an intellectual
insult.
His eye however does
catch an interesting poster hanging in the corner. The title reads,
"AS THE CROW FLIES / YOUR GUIDE TO COMMON FLIGHT DISTANCES".
He sees two cities which he knows are on the same longitude line,
Slepport RI and Orange NJ. Now Las Vegas Nevada is directly 2,957
miles west of Orange and the flight distance from Slepport to Las
Vegas is 3,000 miles.
sharp mathematical mind perceived a right triangle application.
He mentally applied the Pythagorean Theorem and rounded the resulting
square root to the nearest mile. This gave him the distance
between Slepport and Orange. What did he get?
22.)
designs Barbie Doll Accessories like cars and houses etc.. He is
presently working on a Barbie Alpine Village set which includes
a bridge across a raging river. The bridge design is below.
needs to find its total perimeter to determine how much plastic
it will require. Find the perimeter to the nearest inch.
24.)
is a digital diva. She works for the Sega company designing the
play screens of some of the world's best selling video games.
To her the world is a
coordinate grid system. Distance and length are always formulas
taken from numbers on a grid.
She is working on the
final scene of her latest game called. Shmelda Strikes Back. Shmelda
is about to be destroyed by the ancient Icosmatron Queen. Shmelda
must jump along the diagonal path of the rectangle with the coordinates
below.
As you know if she overshoots
the mark, she will fry. Find the length of the diagonal to the nearest
tenth of a unit.