The doorsill of a campus building is h = 7 feet above ground level. To allow wheelchair access, the steps in front of the door are to be replaced by a straight ramp with constant slope 1/10, as shown in the figure. How long must the ramp be? [The answer is not 70 feet.]

Question

anonymous · Answer

If your ramp were a right triangle, are you searching for the length of the hypotenuse or the bottom?

anonymous · Answer

hypotenuse

anonymous · Answer

There's just not enough information. I can't use arcsin or arccos to find the hypotenuse because I don't know the degree measure of that angle, and I don't know the length of the bottom segment to find those angle measures.

anonymous · Answer

Here is the problem...see what you think.