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33 votes
33 votes
4. A six-meter-long ladder leans against a building. If the ladder makes an angle of 60° with the

ground, how far up the wall does the ladder reach? How far from the wall is the base of the
ladder?

User Austin Howard
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2.6k points

2 Answers

28 votes
28 votes
Rather than memorize sines and cosines of various common triangles, I prefer to remember the simple derivation of those formulas…

Imagine that the wall is a mirror, so you have one ladder leaning against the wall and you also have the reflection of that ladder leaning behind it. Now the ladder is 6m long, its reflection is 6m long, and if the distance between their bases is also 6m then you have a 60–60–60 equilateral triangle. And, good news, the problem says that the base angle is 60 degrees. So the real part in front of the mirror is half of the equilateral triangle, which means the distance from the base to the mirror is 3m. And then the height is sqrt(36–9) = sqrt(27) = 3*sqrt(3).

User Melegant
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2.9k points
13 votes
13 votes

Answer: the answer is simply 5.2cm

Explanation:

4. A six-meter-long ladder leans against a building. If the ladder makes an angle-example-1
User Sabir Khan
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2.8k points