Question

Kayla parks her car at the corner of Ogilvie and Montreal Rd. She walks 80m East and then turns 30° to the left towards her office building and continues walking for another 100m until she reaches her building. She then takes the elevator to her office 60m above ground level and looks out the window. She can see her car from here. How far is it from where she is to her car in a direct line?

Answer 1

9514 1404 393

Answer:

184 m

Explanation:

The direct distance from Kayla's car (C) to the door of her office building (B) can be found using the Law of Cosines. The interior angle of the triangle at the turning point is 180° -30° = 150°, so the distance is ...

t² = b² +c² -2bc·cos(T)

t² = 80² +100² -2·80·100·cos(150°) = 30256.406

The direct distance from her window to the car can be found from the Pythagorean theorem. The legs of the right triangle are the distance from the car to the building (CB) and the height from the building entrance to the window (BW).

CW = √(t² +60²) ≈ 184.001

The direct line distance from Kayla to her car is 184 meters.

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For the first computation, we used the usual notation for a triangle, where capital letters (CTB) are the vertices and angles, and corresponding lower-case letters are their opposite sides.