Finding the Length of an External Tangent

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Determine the length of $PQ$, which is externally tangent to Circle A and Circle B. Given that the radius of circle A is 18 and the radius of circle B is 8.

I know the answer is supposed to be 24. How does this come about? I know the distance between the centers A and B would be 26.

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1 Answer

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I am using your drawing which is not in scale. It is only the pythagorean theorem:

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