Question

A 12 foot ladder leans against the wall, touching 11 feet up on the wall. What angle does the latter make with the ground?

Answer 1

Are you familiar with sin, cos, and tan?

Answer 2

yes

Answer 3

OK, good. Let's begin by drawing a picture of the situation...

Answer 4

The ladder is 12 feet long, and it touches the wall 11 feet up, we want to figure out the angle in the bottom left corner, make sense so far?

Answer 5

yes

Answer 6

OK. Can you tell me which side the 11 is on? Is it the OPPOSITE side, the ADJACENT side, or the HYPOTENUSE ?

Answer 7

opposite

Answer 8

Very good! 11 is the opposite side.

OK, so how about the 12? Is that the opposite, adjacent, or hypotenuse?

Answer 9

hypotenuse

Answer 10

Cool! So we know that 11 is the opposite, and 12 is the hypotenuse.

Which trig function should we use then? Sin, Cos, or Tan?
In other words, Which one uses opposite and hypotenuse together?

Answer 11

sine

Answer 12

That's correct. So, what does sine look like? What is the fraction used?

Answer 13

In other words, will it look like\[\frac{opp}{hyp}\] or \[\frac{hyp}{opp}\]?