Question

Suppose a plane coming down for a landing at an airport. The angle of depression is 22 degrees. The plane is 350m from the landing point along the ground. How high is the plane? (round to first decimal place)

Answer 1

See attached diagram.
A right triangle is formed with the 350m adjacent to the 22° angle.
We want to find the height of the triangle, the side opposite.
We can use the tangent ratio (opposite/adjacent) to find this height.
tan(22°) = x/350
Multiply each side by 350
350tan(22°) = x ≈ 141.4 m