Homework Help: trigonometry math

Posted by mikee on Friday, January 4, 2013 at 8:54am.

An aviator heads his airplane due west. He finds that because of a wind from the south, the course makes an
angle of 20" with the heading. If his airspeed is 100 mi/h, what is his groundspeed and what is the speed of the wind?

trigonometry math - Reiny, Friday, January 4, 2013 at 9:05am
Make a sketch
His compass direction is your horizontal line with length of 100
At the end draw a vertical line upwards, (the wind direction from the south), label it y
draw in your hypotenuse h , his/hers actual course .
the angle is 20°

for speed of wind
tan 20° = y/100
y = 100tan20 = appr 36.4 mi/h

for groundspeed
cos20 = 100/h
h = 100/cos20 = appr 106.4 mi/h

check:
100^2 + 36.4^2 = 11324.96
106.4^2 = 11320.7
close enough using my rounded answer

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