ANSWER
The slant height is 40cm.
EXPLANATION
The lateral area of a cone is given by:
[tex]Area= \pi \: r \: l[/tex]
where r=10cm is the radius of the circle and l is the slant height.
It was also given that, the lateral area is 400π cm²
We substitute the values to get,
[tex]400\pi = \pi \times \: 10 \times \: l[/tex]
We now divide both sides by 10π.
This implies that,
[tex] \frac{400 \pi}{10\pi} = l[/tex]
[tex]40 = l[/tex]
Hence the slant height is 40cm.