Question

You're building a 12 foot ramp to the entrance of a building 3 feet above the ground. The ADA regulations require the incline of the ramp to be no more than 5 degrees. What is the degree measure of your angle of elevation? Will it fit the requirements? If not, can you think of a way to make it work.

Answer 1

Answer:

Explanation:

We can assume that:

the 12 foot ramp to the entrance of a building is the base of a right angled triangle and the  3 feet above the ground should be the height above the ground basement. The by using the tangent of a triangle from the knowledge of our trigonometric function; we have:

$\mathbf{tan \ \theta = \frac{opposite}{adjacent}}$

$\mathbf{tan \ \theta = \frac{3}{12}} \\ \\ \mathbf{tan \ \theta = 0.25 } \\ \\ \mathbf{\theta = tan^{-1} (0.25)} \\ \\ \mathbf{\theta = 14.04^o}$

The degree measure of the angle of elevation is 14.04°

NO, it doesn't fit the requirements.

We can increase the foot ramp to 34 feet instead of being the 12 given value in order to fit the requirements.