Q:

Help!!The figure shows the dimensions of a sail for a model boat. What is the area of this sail?Enter your answer as a decimal in the box. Round only your final answer to the nearest tenth. Image Attached

Accepted Solution

A:
First, we are going to use the law of cosines to find the unknown side of our triangle. Remember that the law of cosines formula is: [tex]c= \sqrt{a^{2}+b^{2}-2abCosC} [/tex]
For the image we can infer that [tex]a=7[/tex], [tex]b=8[/tex], and [tex]C=50[/tex]. So lets replace those values in our formula:
[tex]c= \sqrt{7^{2}+8^{2}-2(7)(8)Cos50} [/tex]
[tex]c=6.4[/tex]

Now that we have all of the sides of our triangle, we are going to use the semi-perimeter formula to find its semi-perimeter: 
[tex]s= \frac{a+b+c}{2} [/tex]
[tex]s= \frac{7+8+6.4}{2} [/tex]
[tex]s= \frac{21.4}{2} [/tex]
[tex]s=10.7[/tex]

Finally, now that we have the semi-perimeter of our triangle, we can use Heron's formula to find its area:
[tex]A= \sqrt{s(s-a)(s-b)(s-c)} [/tex]
[tex]A= \sqrt{10.7(10.7-7)(10.7-8)(10.7-6.4)} [/tex]
[tex]A= \sqrt{10.7(3.7)(2.8)(4.3)} [/tex]
[tex]A= \sqrt{476.6636} [/tex]
[tex]A=21.8[/tex]

We can conclude that the area of the sail of our boat is 21.8 [tex]cm^2[/tex].