A flat screen television is advertised as being 41 inches on its diagonal. If the TV is 21 inches tall, then how wide is the screen?

About 35 inches

Step-by-step explanation:

So for this question, it seems like we must use the Pythagorean theorem.

The TV is shaped like a rectangle, meaning that we can divide it into two right triangles.

Looking at one of those triangles, the diagonal would be the hypotenuse, because it is the side facing the right angle (the corner of the TV).

One of the sides of that triangle is given to us (The TV being 21 in tall).

Now we can plug in this information into the Pythagorean theorem, which states that a^2 + b^2 = c^2  (Where c is the hypotenuse).

21^2 + b^2 = 41^2

Then let's simplify.

441 + b^2 = 1681

Now we must subtract 441 from both sides.

b^2 = 1240

Now we would take the positive square root of 1240...

And our answer seems to be about 35 inches.