191k views
5 votes
A man standing 24 feet from a building observes the angle of elevation of its top to be 38°. Find the height of the building to the nearest tenth.

1 Answer

0 votes

Answer:

The height of the building is 18.8 feet to the nearest tenth

Explanation:

Whenever an elevation problem is given the first step is to try to visualize a triangular path between the objects that are given in the problem.

In this case, we can form a triangular path between the man, the top of the building, and the ground.

The height of the building we are looking for will be the opposite side of the triangle because it is directly facing the angle: 38 degrees.

The distance 24 feet will be the adjacent side of the triangle because it is adjacent to that angle

We can use the Tan trigonometric relationship to find a relationship between the length of the sides of the triangle and the available angles.


tan 38 = height/24ft


height = 24 * tan38 = 18.75ft approximately 18.8 ft

A man standing 24 feet from a building observes the angle of elevation of its top-example-1
User Yocasta
by
4.8k points