Question 301392
<font face="Garamond" size="+2">

Go outside and stand in your front yard.  Do you think you can see farther than 23 feet while you are standing on the ground?  Just to give yourself a sense of proportion, a typical suburban home is somewhere between 70 and 110 feet across the front -- so if you are standing on one side of your front yard and can see all the way across to the other side of your yard, you can certainly see farther than 23 feet.  Do you think you might be able to see even farther if you were 45 meters in the air?  Do you think that the answer should be in feet or meters, given that the supplied dimension was in meters, or some other dimension as provided in the description of the formula?  Read the first sentence of your problem again, and read it as many times as necessary until you understand that while the number associated with your answer is indeed 23, that 23 <b><i>feet</i></b> is absolutely incorrect.

And by the way, the sailor would be at the top of a <b><i>mast</i></b>, not the top of a <b><i>mass</i></b>.  Furthermore, 23 is the right number given the formula you were supplied, although *[tex \Large 3.57\sqrt{h}] gives a much more precise answer and that would round off to 24.

John
*[tex \LARGE e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0]
</font>