You know the shortest sides and want the longest before you square root what do you do?

If you know the lengths of the two shorter sides of a right triangle, you can find the length of the longest side (the hypotenuse) using the Pythagorean theorem. You would square the lengths of the two shorter sides, add those squares together, and then take the square root of that sum to find the length of the hypotenuse. So, the formula is ( c = \sqrt{a^2 + b^2} ), where ( c ) is the hypotenuse and ( a ) and ( b ) are the lengths of the shorter sides.