Question

A 3ft bird stands on top of a 26ft building. Looking down at an angle of 60°.

How far must the bird fly to get to the ground

Answer 1

58 ft.

Explanation:

We will use trigonometry to find the distance.

We know that he is 29 ft above the ground (26, height of building, + 3, height of bird).

We use the angle 60 and we see that we have a known side which is adjacent to the angle. The side we are trying to find is the hypotenuse. We will be using cos because cos uses adjacent and hypotenuse sides of triangle.

cos60 = 29/x

cos60x = 29

29/cos60 = x

x = 58

He must fly 58 feet in order to get to the ground.