The builder of a parking garage wants to build a ramp at an angle of 18° that covers a horizontal span of 65 feet. How long will the actual ramp be? Round your solution to four decimal places.

Answer 1

The horizontal span is the side adjacent to the angle. The side they are asking you to solve for, let's make that x, is the hypotenuse. That means this can be set up as a cosine equation. cos = adjacent/hypotenuse.

Plugging in our values,

cos 18 = 65/x Therefore

x=65/cos 18

x=68.3450 ft