Page 70 - Calc for the Clueless

At this point you might cry, "No more. No more!!!!" However, there are two other problems which are in most
books. I think you will appreciate seeing them.

Example 14—

A fence is 8 feet tall and is on level ground parallel to a building. Find the shortest ladder that will go from the
ground over the fence to the building if the fence is 1 foot from the wall.

We will do this problem two different ways; neither will delight you, but both are very instructive.

The ladder L is AE. BC = 1. Again we note similar triangles ABD, ACE. We will let AB = x. By the

Pythagorean theorem, AD = (x + 64) . By similar triangles,
1/2
2