One Hypotenuse to rule them all
This code snippet was published on .
Here’s a fun little demo of some math I found interesting.
If a right triangle has two side-lengths both equal to √2 / 2, what is the length of its hypotenuse?
We’ll build a function to calculate the length of the hypotenuse given the length of the triangle’s other two sides.
For this, we’ll use a bit of algebra you’re probably quite familiar with:
Pythagorean Theorum
a² + b² = c²
Where c represents the hypotenuse, and a and b the other two sides.
Let’s put everything together and calculate this with some JavaScript:
const side = Math.sqrt(2) / 2
// We’re looking for `c` in the equation:
// a² + b² = c²
const calculateHypotenuse = (a, b) => {
// Start with getting the square of the sides,
// `a` and `b`
const a2 = Math.pow(a, 2)
const b2 = Math.pow(b, 2)
// Then, to isolate `c`, take the square root of
// both sides of the equation
return Math.sqrt(a2 + b2)
}
const hypotenuse = calculateHypotenuse(side, side)
Which gives us… 1
Interesting! 🤔