Question

Please Help! An eight foot ladder leans against a building. if the ladder makes an angle of 60 degrees with the ground, haw far from the building is the base of the ladder. Round you answer to the nearest tenth.

Answer 1

The base of the ladder is 4 ft away from the buliding

Here, we want to calculate the distance from the building to the base of the ladder

To properly answer this, an image of the question is needed

We have this as follows;

From the diagram, what we want to calculate is the distance d

To calculate this, we need the appropriate trigonometric identity

Firstly, we need to identify the parts of the triangle present

As we can see, we have the hypotenuse which is the side that faces the right angle and also is the longest side

The side we want to get is the adjacent

Mathematically, the trigonometric ratio that connects the adjacent to the hypotenuse is the cosine

Thus, we have it that;

$\begin{gathered} \cos \text{ 60 = }\frac{d}{8} \\ \\ d\text{ = 8 cos 60} \\ d\text{ = }4.0\text{ ft} \end{gathered}$