Thread: Trig problem help. Similar triangles

Hello,

I've been doing problems like this for awhile now. And most have been relatively easy, but I've hit a wall on this one. If anyone could help me out or point me in the right direction, that would be great.



The problem is to find Y in terms of x1 and x2 using similar triangles.

Thank you

I'm still unable to come up with a formula in terms of x1 and x2 However in the next problem I'm given values for the variables.

x1 = 30 x2 = 40
and the distance between x1 and x2 = 100.

So using what we know about right triangles, I found these values:



sorry, the drawing isn't to scale.


Using the arcsine function, I found that angle P is 21.801

and angle q is 16.999

(in degrees)

So, in solving for y

y CSC (16.99) + y CSC (21.801) = 100

Using algebra I get

y = 100/( CSC (16.99) + CSC (21.801))


Which comes out to about 16.2002 for the length of y

Does that seem right?

I apologize for how messy and incoherent that probably was.