Using the Pythagorean Theorem at the Zoo!

1. John was working at the zoo when he ran into a problem. The tiger somehow got his food dish stuck at the top of his cage! It was stuck to the wire on top of one of the sides. John new the cage was 8 feet tall, but he didnt know how tall his ladder needed to be. If he placed the latter 6 feet away from the side of the cage, how tall of a ladder would John need?

2. Amanda works at the zoo in the summer, and her favorite animal to
take care of was a giraffe. Amanda was trying to remember how tall the giraffe was to tell her friends, but she just couldnt remember! However, Amanda did remember that she used a 17 foot tall ladder to lean up against a wall that the giraffe was standing against one day to feed it, and she had placed the ladder about 8 feet away from the wall. Can you help Amanda figure out about how tall the giraffe was?