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You are standing 164 feet away from the base of a building and your clinometer measures21° when it's looking at the top of the building. (This angle is the one between the groundand the top of the building). Please calculate the height of the building.

User Michael Krupp
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1 Answer

27 votes
27 votes

Given:

Distance between the person and building is 164 ft.

The angle measures from the ground to the top of a building 21 degrees.

To find the height of the building:

Here, Opposite side is the height of the building

The adjacent side is the horizontal distance.

Using the trigonometry ratio,


\begin{gathered} \tan \theta=\frac{Opp}{\text{Adj}} \\ \tan 21^(\circ)=(h)/(164) \\ h=164\tan 21^(\circ) \\ h=62.9537 \\ h\approx62.95\text{ ft} \end{gathered}

Hence, the height of the building is, 62.95 ft.

User Jason Duffett
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