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A statue is mounted on top of a 21 foot hill. From the base of the hill to where you are standing is 57feet and the statue subtends an angle of 7.1° to where you are standing. Find the height of the statue.

1 Answer

5 votes

Please find the attached diagram for a better understanding of the question.

As we can see from the diagram,

RQ = 21 feet = height of the hill

PQ = 57 feet = Distance between you and the base of the hill

SR= h=height of the statue


\angle SPR=Angle subtended by the statue to where you are standing.


\angle x=\angle RPQ= which is unknown.

Let us begin solving now. The first step is to find the angle
\angle x which can be found by using the following trigonometric ratio in
\Delta PQR :


tan(x)=(RQ)/(PQ) =(21)/(57)

Which gives
\angle x to be:


\angle x=tan^(-1)((21)/(57))\approx20.22^(0)

Now, we know that
\angle x and
\angle SPR can be added to give us the complete angle
\angle SPQ in the right triangle
\Delta SPQ.

We can again use the tan trigonometric ratio in
\Delta SPQ to solve for the height of the statue, h.

This can be done as:


tan(\angle SPQ)=(SQ)/(PQ)


tan(7.1^0+20.22^0)=(SR+RQ)/(PQ)


tan(27.32^0)=(h+21)/(57)


\therefore h+21=57tan(27.32^0)


h\approx8.45 ft

Thus, the height of the statue is approximately, 8.45 feet.

A statue is mounted on top of a 21 foot hill. From the base of the hill to where you-example-1
User TimmyB
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