Calculating the area of an equilateral triangle - GMAT Quantitative

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Question

Three straight sticks are gathered of exactly equal length. They are placed end to end on the ground to form a triangle. If the area of the triangle they form is 1.732 square feet. What is the length in feet of each stick?

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Answer

Equilateral_triangle

Let be the length of a side of an equilateral triangle. Then the formula for the area of an equilateral triangle with side is

So solving

we get .

Alternative Solution:

Without knowing this formula you can still use the Pythagorean Theorem to solve this. By drawing the height of the triangle, you split the triangle into 2 right triangles of equal size. The sides are the height, and . Letting stand for the unknown height, we solve

solving for we get

The area for any triangle is the base times the height divided by 2. So

or .

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