Answer:
Everyone has a tough time with this kind of problem. Something about them is just really difficult to teach. I guess.
Step-by-step explanation:
Because these are similar triangles, they are just scale copies of each other. exactly the same angles and the sides are the a single scaling factor different, we can just set them equal to each other as much as possible
18/y = y/2
since they are the same size on side y, then we can figure this out
(y/18)* (18/y) = (y/2)*(y/18) multiply both side by y/18
1 = [tex]y^{2}[/tex] / 36
36 = [tex]y^{2}[/tex] they made it easy for us... :P
6 = y
and then Pythagoras to find x
x = sqrt( 18^2 + 6^2 )
x = 18.9736
x ≈ 19
