Question

A 50 foot ramp makes an angle of 4.9° with the horizontal. to meet new accessibility guidelines, a new ramp must be built so it makes an angle of 2.7° with the horizontal as shown below. what is the length of the new ramp?

Answer 1

This is the concept of trigonometry, for us to calculate the new length we will need to calculate the adjacent length, this will be given by:
cos theta=[adjacent]/[hypotenuse]
theta=4.9°
hypotenuse=50 ft
adjacent=a
thus;
cos 4.9=a/50
a=50cos4.9
a=49.82ft
thus the new length will be given by:
cos 2.7=49.82/h
h=49.82/cos 2.7
h=49.97
the new length will be 49.97 ft