Question

You are standing 400ft away from a building that is 850ft tall. Find the angle of elevation from where you’re standing to the top of the building?

Answer 1

Answer:

The angle of elevation is approximately $64.8^o$

Step-by-step explanation:

Notice that the two pieces of information given: "400 ft away from a building", and building that is "850 ft tall", can be regarded as the two legs of a right angle triangle (see attached image).

Then the angle $\theta$ that we are trying to find (the angle of elevation) can be found by using the arc-tangent function:

$tan(\theta)=\frac{850}{400} \\tan(\theta)=\frac{17}{8}\\\theta =arctan(\frac{17}{8})\\\theta = 64.8 ^o$