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?

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Answer 1 · 2018-07-27T18:57:17

I tried this:

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

#H/1.5=tan(42^@)#
and:
#h/1.5=tan(36^@)#

so that we get:

#H=1.5tan(42^@)=1.35m#
and:
#h=1.5tan(36^@)=1.08~~1.10m#

and

#H-h=1.35-1.10=0.25m# of difference.

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