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| Math Central | Quandaries & Queries |
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Question from Mark: Trying to buy a tent with 6 sides, in the catalog they give me sq. ft., what is the distance from side to side of a hexagonal tent with an area of 90 sq. ft. |
Hi Mark.
Let's call the side length a.
You can consider the floor of the tent to be equivalent to a rectangular floor when you shift things around, as shown on the right..
If we call the height of the triangle h, then Pythagoras' theorem can express h in terms of the hexagon's side length a:
And since you know that the area is 90 sq ft., you can write an expression for the area in terms of a, solve for a and answer your question:
Cheers,
Stephen La Rocque.
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