Question

Julie has a large red apple in her hand that is 4 ft off the ground. A blue bird sees the apple at an

angle of depression of 55°. If Julie is 15 ft from the tree, how tall is the tree?

Answer 1

Explanation:

so from the silly drawing, you can see that the triangle is 4 feet off the ground, and that we want to find the Opp side from our angle of 15 °

Use SOH CAH TOA to recall how the trig functions fit on a triangle

SOH: Sin(Ф)= Opp / Hyp

CAH: Cos(Ф)= Adj / Hyp

TOA: Tan(Ф) = Opp / Adj

use TOA to find the Opp side of the triangle .. which is labeled X

Tan(15) = X / 15

15* Tan(15) = X

4.019 = X

so the bird is up 4 feet in the tree.. not very high up, plus the 4 feet that the apple is already off the ground, soo

the tree... to where the bird is, at least, is 8.019 feet..

did this make sense? :/

hope the drawing helped :P