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A guy wire runs from the top of a cell tower to a metal stake in the ground. Marques places a 11-foot tall pole to support the guy wire. After placing the pole, Marques measures the distance from the stake to the pole to be 3 ft. He then measures the distance from the pole to the tower to be 22 ft. Find the length of the guy wire, to the nearest foot.

User Zach Olivare
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1 Answer

23 votes
23 votes

Final answer:

To find the length of the guy wire, we can use the sine function and the tangent function. By setting up the equations and solving for the unknowns, we can determine that the length of the guy wire is approximately 41 feet.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the length of the guy wire, we can use the sine function. Since we know the height of the pole (11 ft) and the distance from the pole to the tower (22 ft), we can use the angle between the ground and the guy wire to find the length of the guy wire.

We can set up the equation sin(θ) = opposite/hypotenuse, where θ is the angle between the ground and the guy wire, opposite is the height of the pole, and hypotenuse is the length of the guy wire.

Using the given measurements, we have sin(θ) = 11/hypotenuse. We can rearrange the equation to solve for the length of the guy wire: hypotenuse = 11/sin(θ).

Since we know the distance from the pole to the stake (3 ft), we can find the angle θ using the tangent function:

tan(θ) = opposite/adjacent,

where opposite is the distance from the pole to the stake and adjacent is the height of the pole. Plugging in the values, we have tan(θ) = 3/11. Solving for θ, we find that θ ≈ 15.8°.

Now we can substitute this angle into the equation to find the length of the guy wire:

hypotenuse = 11/sin(15.8°) ≈ 41 ft.

User Valamas
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