A person is standing halfway between two trees that are 3m apart. The angle of elevation to the tops of the trees are 42° and 36°. How much taller is one tree over the other?

1 Answer
Jul 27, 2018

I tried this:

Explanation:

Consider the diagram:
enter image source here
we use trigonometry to write:

H1.5=tan(42)
and:
h1.5=tan(36)

so that we get:

H=1.5tan(42)=1.35m
and:
h=1.5tan(36)=1.081.10m

and

Hh=1.351.10=0.25m of difference.

so that the tree on the left is 0.25m taller than the other.