From the foot of a tower, 30m high, a woman observes the top of a pole at an angle of elevation of 30 degrees, from the top of the tower, she observes the top of the pole at an angle of depression of 25 degrees, if the pole and the tower are on the same horizontal level: find, correct to one decimal place the distance from the pole to the tower

1 answer

Let the distance from the foot of the tower to the pole be x.

From the information given, we can set up two right-angled triangles. The first triangle consists of the pole, the ground, and the line of sight from the woman to the top of the pole, while the second triangle consists of the tower, the ground, and the line of sight from the woman to the top of the tower.

In the first triangle (pole triangle), we have:
tan(30°) = 30/x
x = 30/tan(30°) ≈ 51.96m

In the second triangle (tower triangle), we have:
tan(25°) = 30/(x + 30)
x = (30/tan(25°)) - 30 ≈ 11.23m

Therefore, the distance from the pole to the tower is approximately 11.2 meters.