Question

The height of a radio transmission tower is 70 meters, and it casts a shadow of length 30 meters. Find the angle of elevation of the sun.

Answer 1

Given the information shown in the exercise, you can draw the following Right triangle:

Where "α" is the angle of elevation (in degrees).

To find the measure of the angle of elevation of the sun, you must use the following Inverse trigonometric function:

`\alpha=\tan ^(-1)((opposite)/(adjacent))`

In this case, you can identify that:

`\begin{gathered} opposite=70 \\ adjacent=30 \end{gathered}`

Therefore, you can substitute values into the equation and evaluate:

`\begin{gathered} \alpha=\tan ^(-1)((70)/(30)) \\ \alpha=66.80\degree \end{gathered}`

The answer is:

`\alpha=66.80\degree`