How to find the length of the diagonal of a rhombus - Geometry

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Question

Assume quadrilateral is a rhombus. If the perimeter of is and the length of diagonal , what is the length of diagonal ?

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Answer

To find the value of diagonal , we must first recognize some important properties of rhombuses. Since the perimeter is of is , and by definition a rhombus has four sides of equal length, each side length of the rhombus is equal to . The diagonals of rhombuses also form four right triangles, with hypotenuses equal to the side length of the rhombus and legs equal to one-half the lengths of the diagonals. We can therefore use the Pythagorean Theorem to solve for one-half of the unknown diagonal:

, where is the rhombus side length, is one-half of the known diagonal, and is one-half of the unknown diagonal. We can therefore solve for :

is therefore equal to . Since represents one-half of the unknown diagonal, we need to multiply by to find the full length of diagonal .

The length of diagonal is therefore

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