Question

Your town's public library is building a new wheelchair ramp to its entrance. By law, the maximum angle of incline for the ramp is 4.76. The ramp will have avertical rise of 2.5 . What is the shortest horizontal distance that the ramp can span?

Answer 1

The ramp will look like shown below:

We can solve for x using the tangent trigonometric ratio given to be:

`\tan\theta=(opp)/(adj)`

From the image, we have:

`\begin{gathered} \theta=4.76\degree \\ opp=2.5 \\ adj=x \end{gathered}`

Therefore, we can solve as follows:

`\begin{gathered} \tan4.76=(2.5)/(x) \\ \therefore \\ x=(2.5)/(\tan4.76) \\ x=30.0\text{ ft} \end{gathered}`

OPTION B is the correct answer.