Advent calendar 2016
20 December
Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post about different ways to prove Pythagoras' theorem. Today's puzzle uses Pythagoras' theorem.
Start with a line of length 2. Draw a line of length 17 perpendicular to it. Connect the ends to make a right-angled triangle.
The length of the hypotenuse of this triangle will be a non-integer.
Draw a line of length 17 perpendicular to the hypotenuse and make another right-angled triangle. Again the new hypotenuse will have a non-integer length.
Repeat this until you get a hypotenuse of integer length. What is the length of this hypotenuse?