A triangle's side and angle measurements depend on each other. Triangles may be solved through a number of methods. When only one of the triangle's angles is known, the solution must include the lengths of two of its sides. The hypotenuse is a feature specific to right triangles, which are triangles that possess one 90-degree angle, and is both the longest side and the side across from the right angle. Finding the hypotenuse with two angle measurements missing depends on the Pythagorean theorem, in which the square of the hypotenuse's measurement equals the squares of the other two sides' measurements added together.
Instructions
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1
Measure the length of the connecting sides that form the triangle's right angle. For this example, let the sides equal 9 and 12.
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2
Multiply each side's length by itself. In this example, 9 squared is 81 and 12 squared is 144.
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3
Sum the squares and calculate the sum's square root to find the hypotenuse. Concluding this example, adding 81 and 144 together equals 225, and the square root of 225 equals 15.