Question

The angle of depression from the top of a 150 m high cliff to a boat at sea is 7 degrees. How much closer to the cliff must the boat move for the angle of depression to become 19 degrees ...?

Answer 1

The first thing we need to do is use tan to find x. If the original angle of depression is 7 degrees, then the angle from the cliff to the bow of the boat is 90-7=83 degrees. Thus,tan83 = d / 150or we can express it like this:d =150 tan 83 ≈ 855.2where d is the total distance from the boat to the cliff when the angle of depression is 7 degrees. Hope this helps a lot