Question

an airplane pilot find the measure of the angle depression the edge of the runway to be 47 ° . if the altitude of the plane is 550 ft. what is the distance from a point on the ground directly below the plane to the edge of the runway?

Answer 1

From the information provided and the diagram shown, the angle formed by the airplane's altitude and the ground is, 43 degrees (that is 90 - 47).

Therefore, what we now have is a right angled triangle with the reference angle given as 43 degrees, and the adjacent (side between the right angle and reference angle) given as 550 ft. The opposite is unknown and is required to be calculated. Hence, we now have;

`\begin{gathered} \tan \theta=(opp)/(adj) \\ \tan 43=(x)/(550) \\ \tan 43*550=x \\ 550*0.9325150\ldots=x \\ x=512.883297375\ldots \\ x\approx513\text{ ft} \end{gathered}`

The distance is 513 ft (rounded to the nearest whole number)