Question

Henry thinks he can figure out how high his kite is while flying it in the park. First, he lets out 150 feet of string and tlesthe string to a rock on the ground. Then, he moves from the rock until the string touches the top of his head. He standsup straight, forming a right angle with the ground. He wants to find out the distance from the ground to his kite. Hedraws the following diagram to illustrate what he has done.Has Henry done enough work so far to use similar triangles to help measure theheight of the kite? Explain.Your answerHenry knows he is 5.5 feet tall. Henry measures the string from the rock to hishead and finds it to be 8 feet. Does he have enough information to determine theheight of the kite? If so, find the height of the kite. If not, state what otherinformation would be needed. *

Answer 1

We are given the following problem.

Segment BE is henry's height, segment AD are the 150 feet of string. Henry wants to know the value of H. To do that, he would need to use the following relationship:

$\frac{AE}{EB}=\frac{AD}{CD}$

Replacing the known values:

$\frac{AE}{h}=\frac{150}{H}$

Since the value of AE is not given, there is not enough information to determine the height of the kite.