How do you approximate the height of the screen to the nearest tenth?
You want to determine the height of the screen at a drive-in movie theater. You use a cardboard square to line up the top and bottom of the screen structure. The vertical distance from the ground to your eye is 5 feet and the horizontal distance from you to the screen is 13 feet. The bottom of the screen is 6 feet from the ground.
You want to determine the height of the screen at a drive-in movie theater. You use a cardboard square to line up the top and bottom of the screen structure. The vertical distance from the ground to your eye is 5 feet and the horizontal distance from you to the screen is 13 feet. The bottom of the screen is 6 feet from the ground.
1 Answer
32.8 feet
Explanation:
Since the bottom triangle is right-angled, Pythagoras applies and we can calculate the hypotenuse to be 12 (by
Now, let
Since the big triangle is also right-angled, we can thus determine that the angle between the 13 foot side and the line connecting to the top of the screen is
Finally, setting
Since the screen is 1 foot above the ground, and our calculated length is from the person's eye height to the top of the screen, we must subtract 1 foot from our