Question

When flying a kite Peter without 45 feet of string and anchors it to the ground. He determines the angle of elevation of the kite is 63°. What is the height of the kite from the ground? Round to the nearest 10th.

Answer 1

We're going to use trigometric functions!

So we know the angle is 63° (Ф=63°)
the length of the string is 45 ft (hyp=45)
and we need to solve for height (h=?)

Using sinФ=
`(opposite)/(hypotenuse)`

We can rewrite it as
sinФ=
`(height)/(hypotenuse)`

By isolating the height (h) we can find the value
sinФ=
`(height)/(hypotenuse)`
h= hyp(sinФ)

Then insert value of hyp, Ф and find height
h= hyp(sinФ) = 45sin63 = 40 ft

The kite is 40 ft off the ground