ShmoopTube

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And here is your shmoop du jour...

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A line segment has endpoints -2 -3

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and 3, 2 what is it's length?

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And here are your options.

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OK. first we have to visualized this puppy. Just draw a graph

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and will get a slope line from here to here

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You're asking for this distance from here

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to here and the really clever trick is that we have to recognize that this is really a question

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for BJ Pythagoras which is A squared plus B squared equals C squared

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If we draw a dotted line from here to here and this line cut across here

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and then we have a right triangle here. So

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now we just have to get this distance and this distance and we're good to go

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so were two units here and three units here

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so the line is five units long here

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and on this side where three units of two units is over here

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and this virtual line thingy is five units as well

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now we just square them. A square 25 B squared 25. 25 plus 25 is

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50 so this line here is square root of 50

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50 is just 25 times 2 in the square root of 25 is five so the answer is

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five times square root of 2 or answer C.

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