Artemis seeks knowledge of the width of Orion’s Belt, which is a pattern of stars in the Orion constellation. She has previously discovered the distances from her house to Alnitak (736(736left parenthesis, 736 light years, \text{l.y.})l.y.)l, point, y, point, right parenthesis and to Mintaka (915\text{ l.y.})(915 l.y.)left parenthesis, 915, space, l, point, y, point, right parenthesis, which are the endpoints of Orion's Belt. She also knows the angle between these stars in the sky is 3 degrees.
Thank you.
I think you would use the Law of Cosines for this problem:
c^2=b^2+a^2 - 2abCos(C)
c^2=736^2+915^2 - [2.736.915.Cos(3)=0.99863]
c^2=1,378,921 - 1,345,034.7744
c^2=33,886.2256 take the square root of both sides,
c=sqrt(33,886.2256)
c=184 (rounded) - Light Years- The width of Orion's Belt.
CPhill: Please verify this. Thanks.
