Question

9. SAILING The sail on Milton's schooner is the shape of a 30°-60°-90°triangle. The length of the hypotenuse is 45 feet. Find the lengths of thelegs. Round to the nearest tenth.

Answer 1

The triangle is shown below:

Notice how this is an isosceles triangle.

We can find the lengths of the hypotenuse by using the trigonometric functions:

`\sin \theta=\frac{\text{opp}}{\text{hyp}}`

Then we have:

`\begin{gathered} \sin 45=(21)/(hyp) \\ \text{hyp}=(21)/(\sin 45) \\ \text{hyp}=29.7 \end{gathered}`

Therefore the hypotenuse is 29.7 ft.