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Angles of Elevation and Depression Practice Angles of
 Angles going up or down from a horizontal line of sight.
Notes/Highlights Estimated
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Elevation and
Depression
Vocabulary
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PROGRESS

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Angles of Elevation and Depression
Share with Classes You have decided to go camping with some friends. While out on a hike, you reach the top of a
ridge and look down at the trail behind you. In the distance, you can see your camp. You're
Add to FlexBook® thinking about how far you've traveled, and wonder if there is a way to determine it.
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By using a small device called a clinometer, you're able to measure the angle between your
horizontal line of sight and the camp as [Math Processing Error], and you know that the hill you
just hiked up has a height of 300 m. Is it possible to find out how far away your camp is using
this information? (Assume that the trail you hiked is slanted like the side of a triangle.)

Angles of Elevation and Depression

You can use right triangles to find distances, if you know an angle of elevation or an
angle of depression.

Example: Determine What Trig Function Relates Speci c Sides of a Ri…

Ri…

The figure below shows each of these kinds of angles.

The angle of elevation is the angle between the horizontal line of sight and the line of sight up to
an object. For example, if you are standing on the ground looking up at the top of a mountain,
you could measure the angle of elevation. The angle of depression is the angle between the
horizontal line of sight and the line of sight down to an object. For example, if you were standing
on top of a hill or a building, looking down at an object, you could measure the angle of
depression. You can measure these angles using a clinometer or a theodolite. People tend to
use clinometers or theodolites to measure the height of trees and other tall objects. Here we will
solve several problems involving these angles and distances.

Finding the angle of elevation

You are standing 20 feet away from a tree, and you measure the angle of elevation to be [Math
Processing Error]. How tall is the tree?

The solution depends on your height, as you measure the angle of elevation from your line of
sight. Assume that you are 5 feet tall.

The figure shows us that once we find the value of [Math Processing Error], we have to add 5
feet to this value to find the total height of the triangle. To find [Math Processing Error], we
should use the tangent value:

[Math Processing Error]

You are standing on top of a building, looking at a park in the distance. The angle of depression
is [Math Processing Error]. If the building you are standing on is 100 feet tall, how far away is the
park? Does your height matter?

Finding the angle of depression

If we ignore the height of the person, we solve the following triangle:

Given the angle of depression is [Math Processing Error], [Math Processing Error] in the figure
above is [Math Processing Error]. We can use the tangent function to find the distance from the
building to the park:

[Math Processing Error]

If we take into account the height if the person, this will change the value of the adjacent side.
For example, if the person is 5 feet tall, we have a different triangle:

[Math Processing Error]

If you are only looking to estimate a distance, then you can ignore the height of the person
taking the measurements. However, the height of the person will matter more in situations
where the distances or lengths involved are smaller. For example, the height of the person will
influence the result more in the tree height problem than in the building problem, as the tree is
closer in height to the person than the building is.

Real-World Application: The Horizon 

You are on a long trip through the desert. In the distance you can see mountains, and a quick
measurement tells you that the angle between the mountaintop and the ground is [Math
Processing Error]. From your studies, you know that one way to define a mountain is as a pile of
land having a height of at least 2,500 meters. If you assume the mountain is the minimum
possible height, how far are you away from the center of the mountain?

[Math Processing Error]

Examples
Example 1
Earlier, you were asked if it was possible to find out how far away your camp is using the
information given.

Since you know the angle of depression is [Math Processing Error], you can use this information,
along with the height of the hill, to create a trigonometric relationship:

Since the unknown side of the triangle is the hypotenuse, and you know the opposite side, you
should use the sine relationship to solve the problem:

[Math Processing Error]

You have traveled approximately 498.5 meters up the hill.

Example 2
You are six feet tall and measure the angle between the horizontal and a bird in the sky to be
[Math Processing Error]. You can see that the shadow of the bird is directly beneath the bird, and
200 feet away from you on the ground. How high is the bird in the sky?

We can use the tangent function to find out how high the bird is in the sky:

[Math Processing Error]

We then need to add your height to the solution for the triangle. Since you are six feet tall, the
total height of the bird in the sky is 173.8 feet.

Example 3
While out swimming one day you spot a coin at the bottom of the pool. The pool is ten feet
deep, and the angle between the top of the water and the coin is [Math Processing Error]. How
far away is the coin from you along the bottom of the pool?

Since the distance along the bottom of the pool to the coin is the same as the distance along the
top of the pool to the coin, we can use the tangent function to solve for the distance to the coin:

[Math Processing Error]

Example 4
You are hiking and come to a cliff at the edge of a ravine. In the distance you can see your
campsite at the base of the cliff, on the other side of the ravine. You know that the distance
across the ravine is 500 meters, and the angle between your horizontal line of sight and your
campsite is [Math Processing Error]. How high is the cliff? (Assume you are five feet tall.)

Using the information given, we can construct a solution:

[Math Processing Error]

This is the total height from the bottom of the ravine to your horizontal line of sight. Therefore, to
get the height of the ravine, you should take away five feet for your height, which gives an
answer of 228 meters.

Review
1. A 70 foot building casts an 50 foot shadow. What is the angle that the sun hits the
building?
2. You are standing 10 feet away from a tree, and you measure the angle of elevation to be
[Math Processing Error]. How tall is the tree? Assume you are 5 feet tall up to your eyes.
3. Kaitlyn is swimming in the ocean and notices a coral reef below her. The angle of
depression is [Math Processing Error] and the depth of the ocean, at that point is 350 feet.
How far away is she from the reef?
4. The angle of depression from the top of a building to the base of a car is [Math
Processing Error]. If the building is 78 ft tall, how far away is the car?
5. The Leaning Tower of Pisa currently “leans” at a [Math Processing Error] angle and has a
vertical height of 55.86 meters. How tall was the tower when it was originally built?
6. The angle of depression from the top of an apartment building to the base of a fountain in
a nearby park is [Math Processing Error]. If the building is 78 ft tall, how far away is the
fountain?
7. You are standing 15 feet away from a tree, and you measure the angle of elevation to be
[Math Processing Error]. How tall is the tree? Assume you are 5 feet tall up to your eyes.
8. Bill spots a tree directly across the river from where he is standing. He then walks 18 ft
upstream and determines that the angle between his previous position and the tree on the
other side of the river is [Math Processing Error]. How wide is the river?
9. A 50 foot building casts an 50 foot shadow. What is the angle that the sun hits the
building?
10. Eric is flying his kite one afternoon and notices that he has let out the entire 100 ft of
string. The angle his string makes with the ground is [Math Processing Error]. How high is his
kite at this time?
11. A tree struck by lightning in a storm breaks and falls over to form a triangle with the
ground. The tip of the tree makes a [Math Processing Error] angle with the ground 25 ft from
the base of the tree. What was the height of the tree to the nearest foot?
12. Upon descent an airplane is 15,000 ft above the ground. The air traffic control tower is
200 ft tall. It is determined that the angle of elevation from the top of the tower to the plane
is [Math Processing Error]. To the nearest mile, find the ground distance from the airplane to
the tower.
13. Tara is trying to determine the angle at which to aim her sprinkler nozzle to water the top
of a 10 ft bush in her yard. Assuming the water takes a straight path and the sprinkler is on
the ground 4 ft from the tree, at what angle of inclination should she set it?
14. Over 3 miles (horizontal), a road rises 1000 feet (vertical). What is the angle of elevation?
15. Over 4 miles (horizontal), a road rises 1000 feet (vertical). What is the angle of elevation?

Review (Answers)
To see the Review answers, open this PDF file and look for section 1.13. 

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Notes/Highlights
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Vocabulary Language:  English ▼

Term Definition

The angle of depression is the angle formed by a horizontal line and the line of
Angle of Depression sight down to an object when the image of an object is located beneath the
horizontal line.

The angle of elevation is the angle formed by a horizontal line and the line of
Angle of Elevation sight up to an object when the image of an object is located above the horizontal
line.

Image Attributions
[Figure 1]
License: CC BY-NC 3.0

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