Question

Tamara wants to calculate the height of a tree outside her home. Using her clinometer, she measures the angle from 35 feet away from the base of the tree and gets an angle of 62°. Tamara's eye level is 5.5 feet above the ground. How tall is the tree?

Answer 1

71.32 feet

Explanation:

We set up a trigonometric function to get height of tree

Distance ,x = 35 feet away from tree base

Angle = 62⁰ at eye level

Y = tan(angle) * x

= Y = tan(62⁰) x 35

Y = 1.881 x 35

Y = 65.82 feet

We add Tamara's height to the total height of the tree

= 65.82feet + 5.5 feet

= 71.32 feet is the height of the tree