A person standing 20 feet from a streetlight casts a shadow as shown. How many times taller is the streetlight than the person?
Assume the triangles are similar.
1 answer:
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ANSWER
The length of a Diameter is 3.714
EXPLANATION
The circumscribed triangle is shown in the attachment.
We use the cosine ratio to find the altitude of the isosceles triangle.
Altitude =8cos(60°)
Altitude=4cm
Let the upper half of the altitude be y cm.
Then the radius of the circle is (y-4)cm
The upper radius meets the tangent at right angles.
From the smaller right triangle,
y=1.857
The diameter is 2y
=2(1.875)
The length of a Diameter is 3.714