a tree is splintered by lightning 2m up its trunk, so that the top part of ther tree touches the ground. the angle the top of the tree forms with the ground is 70 degree. before it was splintered, how tall was the tree, to the nearest tenth of a metre?

Question

anonymous · Answer

From the problem definition, we have a triangle with one leg that's 2 m long, and the opposite angle is 70 degrees.  What we want to know is the length of the hypotenuse (the part of the tree that fell down) so we can add it to the standing two meters for the total original height

So, using some basic trig:
H*sin(70) = 2m

so H = 2/sin(70)

so the total height was 2 + 2/sin(70)