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. (1 point)

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. (1 point)

Answer 1

We can use the inverse cosine function to find the angle of elevation.

Let the angle of elevation be θ. We can form a right triangle with the height of the street light (16 ft), the distance from Meekah to the base of the street light (8 ft), and the line of sight as the hypotenuse.

Using cosine function:
cos(θ) = adjacent/hypotenuse = 8/16 = 1/2

Now, we can find the angle using the inverse cosine function:
θ = arccos(1/2)
θ ≈ 60 degrees

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