The angle of elevation of a building 80 m high from a man on the ground is 50.41 degrees. How far is the man from the building?

Question

The angle of elevation of a building 80 m high from a man on the ground is 50.41 degrees. How far is the man from the building?

Answer 1

Consider the right triangle with the acute angle 50.41. The right angle is the angle the building makes with the ground. The building is one of the legs (opposite the angle of elevation) and the distance of the man from the building is the other leg (adjacent to the angle of elevation). Therefore, we can use Tangent ratio to find the distance.

Tan(50.41)=opp/adj=80/d

==> d=80/tan(50.41) ==> d≈66.2 m (rounded to 1 decimal place)

Let me know if you have any other question regarding this.