Question

Suppose that you are standing 150 feet from a building and the angle of elevation to the top of the building is 42°. What is the building's height?

Answer 1

135.06 feet

Explanation:

Since the side of the building makes a right triangle with the ground and you know one side length and the degree angle between you and the top of the building we can use trigonometric function to find the height of the building. So since we know one side other than the hypotenuse we can use tangent to solve. Tangent is the opposite side over the adjacent side of the known angle.

opposite side = x

adjacent side = 150 feet

angle = 42°

tan(42°) = x/150 feet

150 feet * tan(42°) = x

x = 135.06 feet