SOLUTION: A video camera is mounted on the top of a 120m tall building. When the camera tilts down 36� with the horizontal, it views the bottom of another building.if it tilts up 47� with th

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Question 946919: A video camera is mounted on the top of a 120m tall building. When the camera tilts down 36� with the horizontal, it views the bottom of another building.if it tilts up 47� with the horizontal, it can view the top of another building.
A) how far apart are the two buildings?
B) how tall is the building viewed by the camera.
Please include a sketch
Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Hint:

Your sketch will look something like this.

I have the camera placed at the top left corner of building B. The horizontal distance between the two buildings (edge to edge) is unknown. We'll call it d for now.

Focus on building A. Specifically the vertical height of this building. We know that building B has a height of 120 meters. The first 120 meters, starting from the ground, is accounted for and shown in the drawing because of building B's height. This is assuming both buildings are on the same level flat ground at the same height above sea level. The rest of the height is unknown. We'll call this h. Therefore, building A has a total height of meters.

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here's how you'll go about solving

first you'll find the value of d. We have a right triangle (the red dashed triangle), so we can use trig ratios.

tan(angle) = opposite/adjacent
tan(36) = 120/d

solve for d to get an approximate decimal number. This will be the approximate distance between the two buildings.

Once you know the value of d, you can use it to find h

tan(angle) = opposite/adjacent
tan(47) = h/d

you plug in the approx value of d found beforehand, then solve for h. The total height will be