Question

medal to best helper

Answer 1

How do you "undo" a tangent?

Answer 2

i suck at these

Answer 3

You use an "inverse tangent"
\[Tan(x) = a\]
\[Tan^{-1}(Tan(x)) = Tan^{-1}(a)\]
\[x = Tan^{-1}(a)\]

Now, that isn't "tangent to the negative one power." That's "Tan inverse." It'll be a button on your calculator.

What do you get for x in your problem?

Answer 4

(Your calculator will probably need to be set to degrees)

Answer 5

i'm confused and frustrated thank's for helping though

Answer 6

Hmm, can you point to something that you aren't understanding in particular?

Answer 7

jjust everything in general oh well i was just trying to get this lesson done but i quit

Answer 8

Well, just a really quick review to hopefully clarify what's going on

Answer 9

it won't clarify anything

Answer 10

Trig functions (Sine, Cosine, Tangent, etc) are ratios of the sides of a right triangle, corresponding to an angle. You may have heard "SOH CAH TOA" before. This tells you which trig function corresponds to which sides of the triangle.

So, for a given angle, Sine is opposite over hypotenuse. So it's a fraction of the length of the leg directly opposite of the angle, divided by the length of the hypotenuse.

Cosine is adjacent divided by hypotenuse. Tangent is opposite over adjacent.

Of use to us, is tangent.

\[Tan(x) = \frac{Opposite}{Adjacent}\]

They tell you what the value of the ratio is. 3.5.
\[Tan(x) = 3.5\]
To solve for x, we take the "inverse tangent" of both sides. This is a function that tells us what angle corresponds to a given ratio.
\[x = Tan^{-1}(3.5)\]
Using a calculator, we get the answer of: 74.0546041
Which we round to wherever we need it.

The buisness of radians vs degrees is because those are the two ways to measure angles. So a different number of radians corresponds to the same ratio (and thus gives a different answer).