One day, a person went to a horse racing area. instead of counting the number of humans an horses, he conuted 74 heads and 196 legs. how many humans and horses were there? a. 37 humans and 98 horses b. 24 horses and 50 humans c. 31 horses and 74 humans d. 24 humans and 50 horses

answer

d. 10

explanation

the distance from point y to wx is the height of the triangle.

using pythagoras theorem,

group similar terms to get,

this implies that,

take positive square root of both sides to get,

this implies that,

geometry: triangles

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answers archive

call the larger triangle abc

then the smaller triangle cde is similar to abc (all angles are equal, aaa).  

ab is the side that is 36, and we wish to find de, the side corresponding to ab

area_cde = area_abc - area_cde --> area_abc / area_cde = 2

let x=length of de

ratio of areas = (ratio of sides)^2

+2+=+%2836%2fx%29%5e2+

+2+=+1296%2fx%5e2+

++x%5e2+=+1296%2f2+=+648+

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