SOLUTION: a 10 foot ladder is to be placed against the aide of a building. the base of the ladder must be placed at an anle of 72 degrees w/ the level ground for a secure footing. find, to t

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Question 34416: a 10 foot ladder is to be placed against the aide of a building. the base of the ladder must be placed at an anle of 72 degrees w/ the level ground for a secure footing. find, to the nearest inch, how far the base of the ladder should be from the side of the building and how far up the side of the building the ladder will reach.
Answer by hydromojo(20) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Draw the ladder on a sheet, the hypotenuse is the lenght of the ladder. The base angle is 72deg.

use a calc to get sin 72 ( works out to .951 )
so, height of the building = 10 * .951 = 9.51 ft
for the distance to the side of the building, use the cosine of the angle

cos 72 = .309
so,distance to the side of the building = 10 * .309 = 3.09 ft
In such 'ladder' probems, a sketch is a great help :-))