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Expert: - 7/16/2009


Question
find the angle of depression from the top of a lighthouse 250 feet above water level to the water line of a ship 2 miles offshore. Thank you!

Answer
One distance is 250 feet.  The other is 2 miles.

It is known that 1 mile is 5280 feet,
so this makes ship 2(5280) feet of shore, which is 10,560 ft.

With the lighthouse being 250 ft, the units are the same.

The distance out is the base of the triangle,
and the distance down is how far down the far leg goes.

This means the the (measure of how far down)/
(measure of how far way) is the tangent of the angle.  

It can be seen that 250 is how far down.
It can be seen that 10,560 is how far away.

This means the tangent of that angle of depression is 250/10560.

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Scott A Wilson

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I can answer any question in general math, arithetic, discret math, algebra, box problems, geometry, filling a tank with water, trigonometry, pre-calculus, linear algebra, complex mathematics, probability, statistics, and most of anything else that relates to math. I can even tell you it takes me over 2,000 steps to go a mile, but is that relevant?

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My master's paper was published in the OSU journal. The subject of it was Numerical Analysis used in shock waves and rarefaction fans. It dealt with discontinuities that arose over time. They were solved using the Leap Frog method. That method was used and improvements of it were shown. The improvements were by Enquist-Osher, Godunov, and Lax-Wendroff.

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Master of Science at OSU with high honors in mathematics. Bachelor of Science at OSU with high honors in mathematical sciences. This degree involved mathematics, statistics, and computer science. I also took sophmore level physics and chemistry while I was attending college. On the side I took raquetball, but that's still not relevant.

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I earned high honors in both my BS degree and MS degree from Oregon State. I was in near the top in most of my classes. In several classes in mathematics, I was first. In a class of over 100 students, I was always one of the first ones to complete the test. I graduated with well over 50 credits in upper division mathematics.

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