Make: Robotic Arms

54 Make: Robotic Arms

Thanks to the Pythagorean theorem, we know

that in a right triangle, the hypotenuse of a right

triangle squared is equal to both sides of the

triangle squared and added together. In other

words,

a + b = c

Then, to find the final value of c, we can rewrite

our equation, making things nice and easy:

If we look back at our diagram, we know that the

two nonhypotenuse sides of our triangle are equal

to our (x, y) coordinates. Keep in mind that in this

first example, we have labeled our x value as a

and our y value as b to better fit the format of the

Pythagorean theorem, but their values haven’t

changed. Let’s plug in our values ...