Solve the following problems.

Question

A flagpole is situated at the top of a building 115 ft tall. From a point in the same horizontal plane as the base of the building the angles of elevation of the top and bottom of the flagpole are 63.2° and 58.6°, respectively. How tall is the flagpole?

Answer 1

Let x = the distance from the point to the base of the building and y be the height of the flagpole.

tan(58.6) = 115/x

x = 115/tan(58.6) = 70.196 ft

tan(63.2) = (115+y)/x =1.98

115+y = 138.964

y ≈ 23.964 feet