Question

What is the distance between the walls? Please explain how you figured it out!

Answer 1

check the picture below.

the distance thus is a + b.

Answer 2

Hello!

To solve this, we need to use some trigonometry. We will want to find the length of the bottom. To do so we will need to find those two sides.

First of all, let's find the base of the left triangle. Let's find the tangent of 45.

tan45=1

Therefore, 30/x=1. Just from this, we can see that the base of this triangle is 30.

Now for the other one. Here we have the hypotenuse. As we are looking for the adjacent side, we can use the cosine.

cos60=0.5

This gives us the equation x/80=0.5

From here, we can see that x=40.

Now we add our lengths.

30+40=70

Therefore, the length between the walls is 70 meters.

I hope this helps!