An engineer on the ground is looking at the top of a building. the angle of elevation to the top of the building is 46°. the engineer knows the building is 250 ft tall. what is the distance from the engineer to the base of the building to the nearest whole foot?

When the question talks about angle of elevation, it means that if you were to draw a line from a specific point (in this case the specific point is the engineer's location) and connect that point to the top of the building, the line would make a 46 degree angle with the ground.
draw the building as just a straight verticle line and draw out a traingle with 3 vertices: the bottom of the building, the top of the building and the engineer's location. we know one of the angles of the triangle is 73 degrees. we know the sidelength opposite to that angle or aka the height of the building, and that's 250. now we want the adjacent leg to the 73 degree angle. this motivates us to use tan. we can set up the following equation:
tan46 = 250/x where x is the distance between the engineer and the base of the building. solving for x gives:
x = 250/tan46
x = 241.42
make sure your calculator is in degree mode and not in radian mode!!!

let me know if you have any questions

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