Question

An airline ramp with a base of 50 feet makes an angle of 27° with the ground. I need to find out how long will a person walk on the ramp.

Answer 1

I think this is what the question means. We are looking for x.

Answer 2

We need the trig function that relates the adjacent leg to the hypotenuse.

Answer 3

Recalling: SOHCAHTOA, we can use the cosine:

\(\cos \theta = \dfrac{adj}{hyp} \)

\(\cos 27^o = \dfrac{50 ~ft}{x} \)

\(x = \dfrac{50~ft}{\cos 27^o} \)

Just do the division to find x, the length of the ramp.