Isn’t that what happened to the Roanoak colony?
Yes, they were abducted by a marauding band of Flatlanders who carved their callingcard, a trigonometric mnemonic on a tree.
Pssst…a square is a rectangle, this being SDMB and all.
Yeah, I know, you know, but the USPS doesn’t.
an uncle who doesn’t have a strong accent.
According to my dad, the hypotenuse is the upstairs bathroom when it is occupied.
I remember re-watching that movie when I was in my 20s and realizing that he was wrong. I was inordinately proud of myself.
You know, I just always thought that was a Simpsons thing.
I didn’t realize the line comes from The Wizard of Oz. Then again, I don’t think I’ve seen the Wizard of Oz in its entirety since The Simpsons began.
Ok, I had to read that twice, but then I seriously LOL’d.
I knew off the top of my head that a hypotenuse was part of a triangle but I couldn’t get more specific than that until I read the whole thread. I’ve long since forgotten any geometry I managed to absorb in high school. I have to take a couple math courses next term in school and I’m more than a little nervous…
I’m so embarrassed, I was thinking hypotenuse might be a grammatical term! :smack:
Doctor Who answer: If the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, why is a mouse when it spins? Harry Sullivan is an idiot!
A hypotenuse is the longest side of a right triangle, which is, if I recall, necessarily the side opposite the 90 degree angle.
I believe because if a right triangle lays on one leg, the other leg will be standing straight up.
Oh, everyone knows that.
Roman central heating
A triangle with the top flattened obscurely. Or that’s the theory.
Yes, and the three sides can be partitioned into two sections each, where each section is one of (a + b - c) / 2, (b + c - a) / 2, and (c + a - b) / 2, and each side has a different pair of sections [a = (a + b - c) / 2 + (c + a - b) / 2, etc]. This is true of all triangles, but in right-angled triangles only, the radii that meet the non-hypotenuse sides form a square with the (a + b - c) / 2 sections, from which it can be seen that they are themselves of that length.
Anyway, a hypotenuse is a method of punishment for a worker in clay who takes drugs.
Yes, and it must be, because in all triangles, the longest side is opposite the largest angle, and in a right triangle neither of the other angles can be larger than 90 degrees.
What is a Hypotenuse - It’s a greeting for someone named Potenuse
Thesumofthesquarerootsofanytwosidesofanisocelestriangleisequaltothesquarerootoftheremainingside!
Best said while wearing Henry Kissinger’s glasses.
Yes, but what about the law of cosines (which, surprisingly, has little to do with the law of sines)? In fact, the Pythagorean theorem is a special case of the law of cosines.
I usually use the Pythagorean theorem as one of the things I list when I ask people who think “schools shouldn’t teach facts; they should teach you how to learn” (i.e. “don’t teach to the test”) what “facts” kids should know when they leave school (along with things like “Where is the USA on a world map/globe?” and “Were the USA and USSR on the same side in World War II or not?”).