hard math question???

schools about over...

Draw yourself a diagram. You have a circle and its centre point (draw on the radius too, with length), a point 13 cm away and a tangent conecting point to circle edge. Tangents are always 90 degrees to the circle. Draw a line connecting the point where the tangent touches the circle and the centre of the circle. You now have a right angled triangle with hypotenuse 13 cm and opposite side 5 cm. You do the math.

This question is not hard at all. The length of tangent is the third side of a triangle drawn from point p to the centre of the circle and the tangent to the circle from the point p. When this forms a triangle,the required side is gotten from pythagoras theorem.

sqrt(13^2-5^2)=

sqrt(144)=

12cm

8 cm. Okay so you have a point 13 cms from center of circle. You know radius is 5 cm. Radius goes from center of circle to edge of circle. So that means it is 8cm from point to circle.

13² -5² = √144

length of the tangent segment = 12

sorry cannot draw circle and lines to explain why it is Pythagoras theorem