physic question

Question

You are standing 50 feet from the base of a flagpole. The angle of elevation to the top of the flagpole is 30°. What is the height of the flagpole to the nearest tenth?

Select one:

a. 14.5 ft

b. 28.9 ft

c. 59.6 ft

d. 25.1 ft

Answer 1

Hi Gin. You can make a right triangle for this question, and make the non-right base angle 30 degrees. The base would be 50, and the height of the tree would be x.

You will see that we would use the tan function, or opposite/adjacent. It would be tan 30 degrees = opposite/adjacent. Since tan 30 degrees = the square root of 3 divided by 3, set that equal to x/50. When you cross multiply, you get 3x = 50 square root of 3.

Solving for x, we get x= 50 square root of 3 divided by 3.

That gives us answer b, 28.9 ft.

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Answer 2

h = height of flagpole

Draw a picture and note that

h/50 = tan30°

h = 50 tan30° ft = ? ft