To find the height of a pole, a surveyor moves 140 feet away from the base of the pole and then, with a transit 4 feet tall, measures the angle of elevation to the top of the pole to be 44. To the nearest foot, what is the height of the pole?

Question

anonymous · Answer

|dw:1372975305623:dw|

anonymous · Answer

ignore the 4 (height of the van) at the bottom, and just work on the triangle.

anonymous · Answer

you know the adjacent side (140) and want to find the opposite side (x)

anonymous · Answer

any idea how you can find this out?

anonymous · Answer

do i use sine?

anonymous · Answer

I used sine and I got 28.28

anonymous · Answer

sine = opposite/hypotenuse
cos = adjacent/hypotenuse
tan = opposite/adjacent

which do you think you should use?

anonymous · Answer

Oh! Tangent! So...Now I've got -36.92 is this right?

anonymous · Answer

would be silly if the flag was negative height :P

so we have 

tan(44) = opposite/adjacent = x/140

anonymous · Answer

solve that for x, and then make sure your calculator is in degrees

anonymous · Answer

Im using my iphone calculator, how do I set it to degrees, do you know?

anonymous · Answer

No idea sorry, Im doing it on windows calculator. I think you can do sums by just typing them into www.google.com

anonymous · Answer

ok, thanks! Ok...I did it again and I got 135.19

anonymous · Answer

awesome me too. Now we need to add the 4 foot high van he is stood on and were done

anonymous · Answer

So the answer would be 139?

anonymous · Answer

yeah

anonymous · Answer

Thanks so much! :)

anonymous · Answer

np