+327 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!
+128406 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
