SOLUTION: Flying at an altitude of 39000 feet one clear day, Cameron looked out the window of the airplane and wondered how far it was to the horizon. Rounding your answer to the nearest mil

Question 1163512: Flying at an altitude of 39000 feet one clear day, Cameron looked out the window of the airplane and wondered how far it was to the horizon. Rounding your answer to the nearest mile, answer Cameron’s question.
Found 2 solutions by solver91311, ikleyn:
Answer by solver91311(24713) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!

Convert 39000 feet to miles and put that into the form of the formula for distance to the horizon that uses a constant of 1.22.

John

My calculator said it, I believe it, that settles it

Answer by ikleyn(52867) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
.

Make a sketch. Draw the Earth sphere section as a circle.

Over the Earth surface, place a dot to show the plane.

Connect the center of the circle with this dot.

Draw a tangent from this dot to the circle.

The length of this tangent segment is "how far Cameron sees the horizon".

Draw the radius from the center of the circle to the tangent point.

You have now the right angled triangle.

Its hypotenuse is the distance from the center of the Earth to the plane.

One of the legs is the Earth radius.

Find the value of the Earth radius from the Internet.

Then apply the Pythagorean theorem to find the value under the question.

When you complete your calculations, you may post them to the forum - I will look and check them.

If you have questions, do not hesitate to ask me.

I will look forward to hear from you.

Happy calculations (!)

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

A TWIN problem to it is under this link

https://www.algebra.com/algebra/homework/word/misc/Miscellaneous_Word_Problems.faq.question.1163367.html

https://www.algebra.com/algebra/homework/word/misc/Miscellaneous_Word_Problems.faq.question.1163367.html

I solved it couple of days ago.

By the way, you may find there the value of the Earth radius, too.

Do not forget to post your "THANKS" to me for my teaching.

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