The area of the rhombus is 480 cm2; the length of one of its diagonals is 4.8 dm. what is the distance between the point of intersection of the diagonals and the side of the rhombus?
Accepted Solution
A:
Recall that a rhombus is a particular kind of parallelogram: the length you are looking for will be half of the parallelogram's height.
First, find the second diagonal of the rhombus: d₂ = 2·A / d₁ = 2·480 / 48 *we transformed the units of measurement from dm to cm = 20 cm
Now, consider the small triangle rectangle formed by the side of the rhombus and the halves diagonals. You can apply the Pythagorean theorem in order to find the side: s = √[(d₁ /2)² + (d₂ / 2)²] =√[(48 / 2)² + (20 / 2)²] = 26 cm
Now, the side of the rhombus is the base of the parallelogram, therefore: h = A / s = 480 / 26 = 18.46 cm
The distance between the point of intersection of the diagonals and the side of the rhombus will be: 18.46 ÷ 2 = 9.23 cm