Question

Your town's public library is building a new wheelchair ramp to its entrance. By law, the maximum angle of incline for the ramp is 4.76. The ramp will have avertical rise of 2.5 . What is the shortest horizontal distance that the ramp can span?

Answer 1

The ramp will look like shown below:

We can solve for x using the tangent trigonometric ratio given to be:

$\tan\theta=\frac{opp}{adj}$

From the image, we have:

$\begin{gathered} \theta=4.76\degree \\ opp=2.5 \\ adj=x \end{gathered}$

Therefore, we can solve as follows:

$\begin{gathered} \tan4.76=\frac{2.5}{x} \\ \therefore \\ x=\frac{2.5}{\tan4.76} \\ x=30.0\text{ ft} \end{gathered}$

OPTION B is the correct answer.