Question

You are standing 400ft away from a building that is 850ft tall. Find the angle of elevation from where you’re standing to the top of the building?

Answer 1

The angle of elevation is approximately
`64.8^o`

Explanation:

Notice that the two pieces of information given: "400 ft away from a building", and building that is "850 ft tall", can be regarded as the two legs of a right angle triangle (see attached image).

Then the angle
`\theta` that we are trying to find (the angle of elevation) can be found by using the arc-tangent function:

`tan(\theta)=(850)/(400) \\tan(\theta)=(17)/(8)\\\theta =arctan((17)/(8))\\\theta = 64.8 ^o`