Question
A 5 foot tall woman stands 15 ft from a statue. She must look up at an angle of 60° to see the top of the statue. How tall is the statue?
Answers
Jai
It's easier if you drew the figure, but it's hard to draw figures here so I'll just describe it. :3
Note that the woman is 15 ft from the statue, and she looks up at an angle of 60° in order to see the top of statue. From here we can actually form a right triangle, with base 15 ft, the height unknown, and 60° angle between the hypotenuse and base.
Let h = height of triangle, which is also the height of statue minus the height of woman. Thus,
tan 60° = h / 15
h = 15 * tan 60°
h = 15*sqrt(3)
Therefore the total height of statue is h plus the height of woman, which is 15*sqrt(3) + 5 ft, or 30.98 ft
Hope this helps~ :3
Note that the woman is 15 ft from the statue, and she looks up at an angle of 60° in order to see the top of statue. From here we can actually form a right triangle, with base 15 ft, the height unknown, and 60° angle between the hypotenuse and base.
Let h = height of triangle, which is also the height of statue minus the height of woman. Thus,
tan 60° = h / 15
h = 15 * tan 60°
h = 15*sqrt(3)
Therefore the total height of statue is h plus the height of woman, which is 15*sqrt(3) + 5 ft, or 30.98 ft
Hope this helps~ :3