Question

A surveyor holds a laser range finder 3 feet above the ground and determines that the range finder is 89 feet from a building and 115 feet from the top of the building. What is the height h of the building? Round your answer to the nearest tenth.

Answer 1

The distance to the top of the building above the range finder can be found from the Pythagorean theorem.
.. d = √(115² -89²) ≈ 72.8 . . . . feet

Adding the height of the range finder, we find the height of the building to be
.. h = d+3 = 75.8 ft