Applications of Trigonometry
Measuring heights and distances
Just imagine how humans could measure the height of Mount Everest!
It would be practically impossible for a person to hold a measuring tape and climb the mountain to measure the height.
Then how did they do it?
Trigonometry comes to our rescue.
How is that? Let's see.
Imagine a person seeing the top of Mount Everest from its foot at some angle . And the distance between the person and the perpendicular to the ground from the peak is also measurable.
You might be getting the idea now!
If we draw a right-angle triangle with the same angle and measure the value of tan.
Since and we know the value of adjacent that is the distance between the person and the perpendicular to the ground from the peak we can multiply and the adjacent distance to get the opposite side value that is nothing but the height of the mounatin
Diagram of the experiment.
Here CD is the height of the mountain.
Angle is made by you when you look at the mounatin.
AD is the distance between your foot and the perpendicular from the peak of the mountain.
Conclusion
This is how we can use trigonometry to calculate heights and distances.