Question

a 15 ft ladder leans against the side of a house. the bottom of the ladder is 8 ft away from the side of the house. Find x, the angle of elevation of the ladder. round your answer to the nearest tenth of a degree

Answer 1

57.8°

Step-by-step explanation:

We can represent the situation as:

So, we can relate, the given measurements with the trigonometric function cosine, so:

`\begin{gathered} \cos x=\frac{Adjacent\text{ side}}{Hypotenuse} \\ \cos x=(8)/(15) \end{gathered}`

Then, solving for x, we get:

`\begin{gathered} \cos x=0.533 \\ x=\cos ^(-1)(0.533) \\ x=57.8 \end{gathered}`

Therefore, the angle of elevation of the ladder is 57.8°