Meekah is looking at a bird perched on top of a street light. Her line of sight, which is the diagonal distance to the top of the street light, is 16 feet, and she is standing 8 feet from the base of the street light. Use the inverse of cosine to find the angle of elevation with which she is looking at the bird. Round your answer to the nearest whole degree.

Question

Meekah is looking at a bird perched on top of a street light. Her line of sight, which is the diagonal distance to the top of the street light, is 16 feet, and she is standing 8 feet from the base of the street light. Use the inverse of cosine to find the angle of elevation with which she is looking at the bird. Round your answer to the nearest whole degree.

Answer 1

To find the angle of elevation, we can use the inverse cosine function. We know that the adjacent side is 8 feet and the hypotenuse is 16 feet.

cos(angle) = adjacent / hypotenuse
cos(angle) = 8 / 16
cos(angle) = 0.5

Now, we can find the angle by taking the inverse cosine of 0.5:

angle = arccos(0.5)
angle = 60 degrees

Therefore, Meekah is looking at the bird with an angle of elevation of 60 degrees.