Question

Assume you are flying in a plane at an altitude of 25,000 feet to skydive. If you can see the landing spot at an angle of depression of 19 degrees, how many feet until you are over the landing spot and ready to jump?

Answer 1

To find the distance until you are over the landing spot and ready to jump, you can use the tangent function. Plugging in the given values, the distance is approximately 73,902.7 feet.

Step-by-step explanation:

To determine the distance until you are over the landing spot and ready to jump, we can use trigonometry. Since we know the angle of depression is 19 degrees, we can use the tangent function to find the distance. The tangent of an angle is equal to the opposite side divided by the adjacent side. In this case, the opposite side is the altitude of the plane (25,000 feet) and the adjacent side is the distance we want to find. So we can write the equation:

tan(19 degrees) = opposite/adjacent

Plugging in the values:

tan(19 degrees) = 25,000/adjacent

Solving for adjacent, we get:

adjacent = 25,000/tan(19 degrees)

Using a scientific calculator, we can calculate that the adjacent side is approximately 73,902.7 feet. Therefore, you would be about 73,902.7 feet over the landing spot and ready to jump.