A painter is placing a ladder to reach the third story window, which is 20 feet above the ground and makes an angle with the ground of 80°. How far out from the building does the base of the ladder need to be positioned?
We can use the tangent to solve this
tan (80°) = 20 / D where D is the distance we need
Rearrange as
D = 20 / tan (80“) ≈ 3.5 ft [ this is reasonable because the ladder is at a steep angle with the ground ]
