Expert: Sherman D. - 3/4/2005

Question
1) a student looks out of a second-story school window and sees the topf of the school flagpole at an angle of elevation of 22 degrees. The student is 18 ft. above the ground and 50 ft. from the flagpole. Find the height of the flagpole.
2) from a ship offshore, the angle of elevation of a hill is 1.1 degrees. after the ship moves inland at 4.5 knots for 20 min. the angle of elevation is 1.4 degrees. how high is the hill? (1 knot= 1 nautical mile per hour which is approx. 6080 ft per hour)

Answer
1.)
Tan(22) = (x/50)
x = 50 * tan(22)
x = 20.20131129 ft

Now add that to how far he is off the ground and you get
20 + 18 = 38, the Flagpole is 38 ft off the ground.
ANS : 38 ft

Here is how i got the answer. I'm not really worried about how high he is off the ground, because that isn't ground level. Lets pretend he is at ground level and he is looking up at the flag at a 22 degree angle and he is 55 ft from the flagpole. This will give you the adjacent side and you need to find the opposite side, this that is what i used Tan. Now after i found the answer for that, i added 18 ft, because that is how tall the flagpole is from the second story, but not from the top of the flag to the second floor.

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2.) Sorry having trouble doing thiso ne. Not to good at certain word problems.

The values i come up with, seem to be way off. If you could give me the answer, i will let you know if that is what i got, but i don't want to mislead you, so that is why i didn't tell you what to do.