Question

Information for the park trails is displayed at the entrance to the park office.

How long is Trail B?

Show your work and round your answer to the nearest foot.

Answer 1

So you can use tan here, which is opposite/adjacent. (We're looking for the Adjacent)

Since we know Trail E is 1700, we're looking for the patch of trail A that is the adjacent. So if we put 42 into a tan calculator we get about 0.9.

So that means that 1,700 / adjacent = 0.9.

So we can also say

1,700/0.9 = adjacent

or, 1,700/0.9 = 1888.89

Now, we have the little patch of trail A in the smaller right triangle. We want to find the patch of trail A in the larger right triangle.

So just do 5,000 - 1,888.89

You get 3111.11

So if we know that's that, and we're looking for the hypotenuse, or Trail B, we can use cosine, because that's adjacent / hypotenuse.

So 42 in a cosine calculator is 0.74 ish.

So 3111.11 / hypotenuse = 0.74

Or 3111.11 / 0.74 = hypotenuse

Or 3111.11 / 0.74 = 4204

So Trail C should be 4204 feet long.