Question

a guy wire is attached to a tree 3.5ft above the ground to stabilize it. if the guy wire forms an angle with the tree of 50°, what is the length of the guy wire?

Answer 1

The plane figure formed by the ground, the guy wire, and the tree is a right triangle with the hypotenuse equal to length of the guy wire. The angle given is an angle adjacent to 3.5 ft. Therefore, the most suitable trigonometric function for this is,
                                  cos (50°) = adjacent / hypotenuse
                                   cos 50° = 3.5 ft / hypotenuse
The value of the hypotenuse is 5.445 ft. 
Hence, the length of the guy wire is approximately 5.445 ft.