Question

A person is standing 50 ft from a statue. The person looks up at an angle of elevation of 8 degrees when staring at the top of the statue. Then the person looks down at an angle of 14 degrees when staring at the base of the statue. How tall is the statue to the nearest tenth of a foot?

Answer 1

The height of the statue is 19.5 feet.

Why?

We can solve the problem using trigonometric formulas. In this case, we are going to use the trigonometric formula of the tangent.

We know that the person is standing 50ft from the statue, so, it will be the base of the two triangles formed by both angles (elevation and depression)

Using the trignometric formula, we have:

First triangle:

$tg(\alpha )=\frac{h_{1}}{base} \\\\tg(8\°)=\frac{h_{1}}{50ft}\\\\0.14*50ft=h_1\\\\h_1=7ft$

Second triangle:

$tg(\alpha )=\frac{h_{2}}{base} \\\\tg(14\°)=\frac{h_{1}}{50ft}\\\\0.25*50ft=h_1\\\\h_1=12.5ft$

Now, the total height of the statue will be:

$TotalHeight=h_1+h_2=7ft+12.5ft\\\\TotalHeight=19.5ft$

Have a nice day!