Question

A ladder leaning against a wall makes a 60° angle with the ground. The base of the ladder is 3 m from the building. How high above the ground is the top of the ladder?

Answer 1

The distance is 5.20m

Explanation:

Here, we want to get the height of the ladder

To get this, we need to understand that we have a right triangle, with the base of the triangle as 3 m, the angle at the downward part is 60, and we want to get the height of the triangle

The angle here faces the height we want to calculate

This height is known as the opposite

What we have is the adjacent

Now, the trigonometric identity that relates the opposite and the adjacent is the tan

The tangent of an angle is the ratio of the opposite to the adjacent

Mathematically;

tan 60 = h/3

h = 3 tan 60

h = 5.20 m

The ladder is at a height of 5.20 m above the ground