A 20 ft ladder is placed next to a building. The ladder forms a 72° angle with the ground. How far is base of the ladder from the base of the building? Round your answer to the nearest tenth of a foot. Show your work.
Please give a step by step explaition, I remeber learning this and solving with Tan, Cos, and Sin equations but can't rember how to set the equation up correctly. Thank you so much for your time and help!
The ladder forms the hypotenuse of a right triangle
We know an angle and we are looking for the adjacent side to this angle
So....the cosine = adjacent / hypotenuse
So we have
cos (72°) = adj / 20 multiply both sides by 20
20 cos (72°) = adj ≈ 6.18 ft = 6.2 ft from the building base