Question 540339
fun, huh...


the line of sight from the crow's nest (what about your height? 6 feet?) to the top of the tree is tangent to the Earth's surface
___ at the point of tangency, the line is perpendicular to (right angle) the Earth's radius


so you have TWO right triangles, where the sum of the two missing sides is the distance you want to find


the common side of the triangles is the Earth's radius (3963 * 5280)


one hypotenuse is the crow's nest [(3963 * 5280) + 40] ... your height?


the other hypotenuse is the tree top [(3963 * 5280) + 50]


use Pythagoras to find the missing sides (hope you have a lot of digits on your calculator)
___ Windows has a good built-in scientific calculator