Quadrilateral has perpendicular diagonals. It is also known that , , . Determine the length of .
Pick one
Solution
The answer is . Let, as in the figure, be the meeting point of the diagonals, the lengths of the segments and those of the segments respectively. Since all the angles at are right angles, by the Pythagorean theorem we have
By adding the first and third equations and subtracting the second, we then obtain

A simple calculation now gives the answer: . Finally, observe that the same answer is obtained even if the quadrilateral is not convex: in that case, the point in the figure is replaced by the point , its reflection with respect to , and the same reasoning can be applied.
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