Question

a plane is 130 mi north and 171 mi east of an airport. Find x, the angle the pilot should turn in order to fly directly to the airport. Round your answer to the nearest tenth of a degree.

Answer 1

Based on the information and diagram of the question, you can use the tangent function to get the value of x. Notice that you have a right triangle in the figure.

Then, you have:

tan x = opposide side/adjacent side

tan x = 130 mi/171 mi

tan x = 0.76

to solve for x, apply tan⁻¹ both sides:

tan⁻¹(tan x) = tan⁻¹(0.76)

x = tan⁻¹(0.76)

x = 37.24°

Hence, the pilot should turn an angle of 37.24° to fly directly to the airport, which is approximately 37.2°