Thread: Distance Between Towns

An airplane flying at 37,000 feet takes two observations of two towns. The first angle of depression is 32 degrees and the second is 76 degrees. How far part are the two towns?

I take it angle of depression is measured from the horizontal view of the airplane?

Drawing this out will give you a right angled triangle, with a smaller right angled triangle contained within this, both with a side of 37,000 ft.

Using the tan rule, we get the first town to be 59212.38 ft away from the point directly below the airplane. Repeating this for the second town and we get this town to be 9225.14 ft away from the point below the airplane.

If we subtact the second value from the first, we then get the distance between the towns to be 49987ft to the nearest foot.

This is presuming I have not done it some overly complicated way again

Hope this helps

Craig

The image below shows how I got the angles for the trig, hope it's not too confusing

Originally Posted by craig

The image below shows how I got the angles for the trig, hope it's not too confusing

Thanks for both replies.