There are about 20 ways to do this, wondering what your instructor wanted.
1) Easiest way: sketch the triangle, you have an isosceles triangle, and you can easily deduce from your sketch the included angle. Law of cosines to find the unknown side, then law of sines to get the other angles, and from the sketch, you can deduce the bearing from those angles.
2) add the given vectors:
R is resultant, so you are looking for -R
R=vector1 + vector 2
= 400cos35 N + 400sin35 E + 400cos145 N + 400sin145 E
combine the N, E components to get a single N, E componsent.
-R is the negative of those.
bearing= arctan(Eastcomponent/Ncomponent)
distance^2=Ncompon^2 + E component^2
A pilot flies her plane on a bearing of 35 degrees minutes from point X to point Y, which is 400mi from X. Then she turns and flies on a bearing of 145 degrees to point Z, which is 400 mi from her starting point X. What is the bearing of Z from X, and what is the distance YZ?
400 sin 145 degree/sin 35 degree = this gave me 400mi which I already know.
I'm stuck on the steps to find what I need the bearing and distance.
Any insight is appreciated, thank you.
1 answer
1 answer