Question

The students in Mr.Collins class used a surveyors measuring devices to find the angle from their location to the top of a building. The also measured their distance from the bottom of the building.

The diagram shows the angle measure and the distance.
To the nearest foot, find the height of the building.

Answer 1

Here we will be using the Pythagorean theorem to answer this problem since a right triangle is involved. The distance from the surveyor to the foot of the building is the adjacent side and the height of the building is the opposite side.

We will then use the tangent function (opposite /adjacent).

tan(70) = x/100 where x is the height of the building.

100tan(70) = 274.74