How to find the diagonal of a cube - GRE Quantitative Reasoning

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Question

The surface area of a cube is 486 units. What is the distance of its diagonal (e.g. from its front-left-bottom corner to its rear-right-top corner)?

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Answer

First, we must ascertain the length of each side. Based on our initial data, we know that the 6 faces of the cube will have a surface area of 6x2. This yields the equation:

6x2 = 486, which simplifies to: x2 = 81; x = 9.

Therefore, each side has a length of 9. Imagine the cube is centered on the origin. This means its "front-left-bottom corner" will be at (–4.5, –4.5, 4.5) and its "rear-right-top corner" will be at (4.5, 4.5, –4.5). To find the distance between these, we use the three-dimensional distance formula:

d = √((x1 – x2)2 + (y1 – y2)2 + (z1 – z2)2)

For our data, this will be:

√( (–4.5 – 4.5)2 + (–4.5 – 4.5)2 + (4.5 + 4.5)2) =

√( (–9)2 + (–9)2 + (9)2) = √(81 + 81 + 81) = √(243) =

√(3 * 81) = √(3) * √(81) = 9√(3)

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