Answer:
- <u><em>Approximately 600 miles</em></u>
Explanation:
There are several ways to solve this using different assumptions.
First you need to imagine an isosceles triangle formed by:
- the equal sides of the triangle are the distance between the Earth and the Moon: 234,000 miles
- the included angle is 30 second of degree
- the base side of the triangle, opposed to the 30 seconds angle, is how far in miles from its assigned target the laser beam is: x
You can solve for x in several ways.
I will use the cosine rule:
Where:
One second of degree equals 1/3600 degrees:
Substitute in the equation and compute: