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Directions Using what you know about the area of a parallelogram, explain why the red and yellow areas remain the same as you drag them first up and then down.   What does this say about the area of the 3 squares drawn on the triangle?   Write your conclusion as an equation.   What does your equation tell you about the relationship among the three sides of a right triangle?   You use letters for the lengths of the sides to express your relationship in equation form.

© 2006 Connected Mathematics Project, Michigan State University