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A flagpole is placed on top of a pedestal which is at a distance of 15 m from an observer. The height of the pedestal is 20 m. If the angle subtended by the flagpole at the observer's location is 11°, compute the height of the flagpole (m.).

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Final answer:

To find the height of the flagpole, you can use the tangent function with the distance of the pedestal and the angle subtended by the flagpole. Plugging in the values, the height of the flagpole is approximately 2.9 m.

Step-by-step explanation:

To solve this problem, we can use trigonometry. Since we have the distance of the pedestal from the observer as 15 m and the angle subtended by the flagpole as 11°, we can use the tangent function to find the height of the flagpole. The tangent of an angle is equal to the opposite side divided by the adjacent side.

In this case, the opposite side is the height of the flagpole and the adjacent side is the distance from the observer to the pedestal. So, tan(11°) = height/15. We can rearrange the equation to solve for the height: height = 15 * tan(11°). Plugging in the values, we find that the height of the flagpole is approximately 2.9 m.

User Christopher Riches
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