A 28 foot ladder just reaches the top of a building and forms an angle at 44. 4 degrees with the wall of the building. How many feet is the building tall?

cos 44.4 = h/28

To find out how many feet the building is tall, we can use trigonometry, specifically the sine function. The sine of an angle in a right triangle is equal to the ratio of the length of the opposite side to the length of the hypotenuse.

In this case, the ladder represents the hypotenuse of the right triangle, and the height of the building represents the opposite side. So, we can use the sine function to find the height of the building.

sin(angle) = opposite / hypotenuse

First, convert the angle from degrees to radians by multiplying it by π/180:

angle_radians = 44.4 * π / 180

Now, we can plug in the values into the equation:

sin(angle_radians) = height / ladder_length

Rearrange the equation to solve for the height:

height = ladder_length * sin(angle_radians)

height = 28 * sin(44.4 * π / 180)

Using a calculator to evaluate sin(44.4 * π / 180), we get:

height ≈ 19.26 feet

Therefore, the building is approximately 19.26 feet tall.