Question

what angle is formed between the ground and the baseball bat?

Answer 1

Since the triangle in the diagram is a right triangle, we can use the trigonometric function cosine to solve this problem.

The cosine of an angle x is defined as follows:

$\cos x=\frac{\text{adjacent side}}{\text{hypotenuse}}$

First, we have to find the adjacent side to the angle x:

And then, find the hypotenuse of the triangle, which will be the side opposite to the 90° angle:

$\begin{gathered} \text{adjacent side=15in} \\ \text{hypotenuse}=32in \end{gathered}$

Thus, we substitute this in the definition of the cosine of x:

$\cos x=\frac{15in}{32in}$

And to solve for x, we use the inverse cosine:

$x=\cos ^{-1}(\frac{15}{32})$

The result is:

$x=62.05$

Answer: 62.05°