Mathematics
For all the students wondering why they would ever need to use the Pythagorean theorem, Katie Steckles is delighted to report on a real-world encounter
By Katie Steckles
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Shutterstock/Claudio Gennari
Recently, I was building a flat-pack wardrobe when I noticed something odd in the instructions. Before you assembled the wardrobe, they said, you needed to measure the height of the ceiling in the room you were going to put it in. If it was less than 244 centimetres high, there was a different set of directions to follow.
These separate instructions asked you to build the wardrobe in a vertical orientation, holding the side panels upright while you attached them to the base. The first set of directions gave you a much easier job, building the wardrobe flat on the…
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