Question

A tower that is 154 ft tall casts a shadow 166 ft long. Find the angle of elevation of the sun to the nearest degree.

Answer 1

It would be best if you draw or sketch the system described above. You will see that a right triangle would be formed where the height of the triangle is equal to the height of the tower and the base would be equal to the shadow casted by the tower. We can use a trigonometric function for this.

tan (angle) = height / base
angle = tan^-1 (height /base )
angle = tan^-1 (154 /166 )
angle = 42.85 degrees