No. 27 is a little trickier than it might seem.....the horizontal distances from 0 to 3 and from 0 to 5 are not 13.6 ft and 24.6 ft, respectively...
Let's look at 0 to 3
The horizontal distance, d, can be represented as the adjacent side of a right triangle with a hypotenuse of 13.6 ft and an included angle of 2°...and we have
cos (2°) = d / 13.6 multiply both sides by 13.6
13.6 cos (2°) = d = about 13.59 ft = 13.6 ft (rounded)....this horizontal distance is almost the same as the measured distance because of the small incline between the two stations
However.....the horizontal distance, d, between 0 and 5 is quite different from the measured distance....using the same idea as before, we have that
cos (23°) = d / 24.6 multiply both sides by 24.6
24.6 cos (23°) = d = about 22.6 ft. .......note that the steeper incline makes the measured distance about 2 feet more than the horizontal distance
