Question

An airplane is 25 mi from an airport at an altitude of 2 1/2 mi what angle of descent (depression) will take the plane directly to the airport? Express your answer to the nearest degree.

Answer 1

We can represent the situation with a right triangle with hipotenuse 25 mi and height 2.5 mi. Then, the angle of descent x is expressed by:

$\begin{gathered} \sin x=\frac{2.5}{25}=0.1 \\ x=\sin^{-1}0.1\approx6\degree \end{gathered}$