Trevor Stott

Math 1080, Shane Tang

Math 1080 Height Project

A Warm Up Question:

For my Warm up question,

I decided to find the height
of a light post in front of
my neighbors house.

I took the picture of the

light post then measured
the distance from the light
post to a crack in his
driveway using a tape
measure. The Distance I
found was 15 feet. Using
an application on my
phone that measures
angles in photos I found
the angle to be 45 degrees
(in photo angle read is
45.10 degrees rounded of
to 45 degrees believing in
a slight misplacement of
the dot).

This means that the set-up

triangle has a 45-45-90 ratio, which would give both the adjacent and
opposite sides the same length of 15 feet. I verified my answering by finding
the tangent of 45 degrees with an adjacent length of 15 ft. modeled:

h
tan 45 =
15

The height I found was 15 feet.

A Challenge Question:

For my Challenge Question, I

choose to find the height of a
mountainfrom the houses to a
radio tower on the top of the
mountain (note that the tower
is covered by the red circle).

To find the height of the

mountain I had to find two points with diferent distances from the base of
where I wanted to measure. The two points I chose were at the bases of two
separate trails leading up the side of the mountain. I found the distance
between these two points by first finding my pace which I found to be 2.7
feet long. I then walked the distance between the two trails 4 times. Each
time counting the number of paces between the two points, my results were
as follows:

1st trip: 442 paces

2nd trip 443 paces
3rd trip 442 paces
4th trip 441 paces

the average number of paces therefore is 442. By multiplying

442 paces by 2.7 feet/pace I calculated the distance to be 1193.4 feet. By
relating the two triangles I could find the height of the mountain.

I used the before mentioned application to find the angle of elevation for the
two points.

For these equations, we let:

= 19 (the first angle measured)

= 13.5 (the second angle measured)
s = 1,193.4 ft (the distance between two trails)
h represents the height of the mountain.
d represents the distance between the base of the mountain and the nearest
trail.

h
tan =
s+ d

tan =h/d

we take the first formula and solve for s giving us:

 hs ( tan)
d=
tan

from there we plug the above equation into the second equation and solve
for h giving us:

( tan ) ( tan ) ( s )
h=
tantan

By plugging in the values of ,, and s we get a value of 946.325ft.

Although I do not know if I will ever need to find the height of any
object using trigonometry in my future career, I believe that learning
trigonometry will help me in my future career. This however does not mean
that all the work I did to learn this principle was in vain. In fact, the exact
opposite. By learning this principle, I proved to myself I am capable of
solving a problem many other people would be unable to solve. In high
school, I had a very talented math teacher, who often acknowledged the fact
that many of her students would never use the math taught in their day to
day lives. She explained however, the importance of being able to correctly
solve the problems in the class was: to be able to do it. Every time you
stretch yourself to learn something new, you connect new synapses in your
brain she explained you learn how to solve problems. Solving problems is
a Learning how to use trigonometry in a real-world example helped me to
become better problem solver. I conclude that the ability to solve problems is
one of the most sought after attributes to any employer, and that by
completing this project has been helpful to my development of this ability.