Question

A detective knows what time of day it is based on the angle at which the sun is hitting a man. Suppose a detective is looking at a photograph of a 6-foot tall man with a shadow that is 3.5 feet. Find the angle at which the sun is hitting the ground.

Answer 1

Answer:

The angle $\theta$ at which the sun is hitting the ground is:

$\theta\approx 59.74^o$

Step-by-step explanation:

You can use right angle trigonometry to solve this, since the man (6 ft tall) and the shadow on the ground (3.5 ft long) form a right angle triangle as shown on the attached image.

The use the tangent function to find the angle that the sun's rays make with the ground:

$tan(\theta)=\frac{opposite}{adjacent} \\tan(\theta)=\frac{6}{3.5} \\\theta=arctan(\frac{6}{3.5})\\\theta\approx 59.74^o$