READ & HEEELP !

[Jasmine_Poland]

David and Emily are climbing El Capitan, a big wall cliff in Yosemite National Park. David is on the ground holding the rope attached to Emily as she climbs. When Emily stops to rest, David wonders how high she has climbed. The rope is attached to his waist, about 3 feet off of the ground, and he has let out 40 feet of rope. This rope makes a 35 angle with the cliff wall.

a. Assuming that the rope is taut (i.e., pulled tight), approximately how high up the wall has Emily climbed?

b. How far away from the wall is David standing? Describe your method.

[so i started out with drawing a 90* triangle with the 35* angle in the lower left corner & since the rope is 3 feet off of the ground, i did 43 for the hypotenuse. so then ... ]
tan(35) = .700
x/43 = .700/1 ...... i did the fish method & got 30.1
theeeeen i plugged 30.1 into the triangle & did the pothagaren therum & got 30.70 for B .
A: 30.1
B: 30.70

am i correct ?

 

[mmm4444bot]

tan(35) = .700

x/43 = .700/1

You did not define the meaning of symbol x.

If x is the distance from David to the wall base, then x/43 is not the tangent ratio; it's the cosine ratio.

I'm not familiar with the fishy method, but I agree that David is standing about 30.1 feet from the base of the wall.

I used h for the vertical distance.

sin(35°) = h/43

cos(35°) = x/43

I calculated h first, from the sine ratio above. Then, I used that value of h in the cosine ratio above, to solve for x.