Can you solve the "Hanging Cable" problem, used as an Amazon interview question?

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An anonymous reader shares a problem that Amazon asks in its interviews:

A cable of 80 meters is hanging from the top of two poles that are both 50 meters off the ground. What is the distance between the two poles (to one decimal point) if the center cable is (a) 20 meters off the ground and (b) 10 meters off the ground?

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@TheJoker
Did u share the news just for sharing or to get our response?

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10 meters above the ground

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sry 10 meters off the ground

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You can also solve A without hard math, just geometry.

First, drop the factors of 10 so it’s 5 tall and 2 off the ground and 8 long

Find the upper bound:
Imagine the rope taught in two triangles. Then one of those triangles has a base of 2.64 = sqrt(16-9)

Find lower bound:
Replace the rope with 4 sticks each 2 long.
pin the left and right sticks to their flagpoles. this leaves two triangles for the remaining sticks to form.
length of the base of one triangle 1.76 = sqrt( 4 -1)

So the full width is twice those bounds: 5.2 > X >3.5

Pick a value in the middle 4.35

That’s got 1 digit accuracy on the right answer.

For Part B it will be 0.0 m

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I got the answer 52.9 meters
is it right ???

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It will be near about 42 < X > 44.

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Answer

(a) 52.9m

(b) 0m

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ummmm… nevermind , looked it up on yt
the ans is 45.4 meters