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geometry intermediate
Problem
Trapezoid has parallel sides of length and of length . The other two sides are of lengths and . The angles and are acute. What is the length of the shorter diagonal of ?
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
Solution
In the diagram, . Denote and . In right triangle , we have from the Pythagorean theorem: . Note that since , we have . Using the Pythagorean theorem in right triangle , we have . We isolate the term in both equations, getting and . Setting these equal, we have . Now, we can determine that . The two diagonals are and . Using the Pythagorean theorem again on and , we can find these lengths to be and . Since , is the shorter length, so the answer is . Or, alternatively, one can notice that the two triangles have the same height but has a shorter base than .
Final answer
B