McGraw Hill Integrated II, 2012
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McGraw Hill Integrated II, 2012 View details
4. Trigonometry
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Exercise 8 Page 655

Determine the trigonometric ratio to use according to the given information and the unknown.

16.64

Practice makes perfect

We are given the length of one leg and the measure of an acute angle of a right triangle. We want to find the length of the other leg.

Note that the given side is adjacent the given angle, and the side we want to find is opposite to the given angle. Therefore, we will use the tangent ratio. tan θ = Length of leg opposite toθ/Length of leg adjacent toθ In our triangle, we have that θ =52^(∘) and the length of the adjacent leg is 13. We want to find the length of the leg opposite to the angle.
tan θ = opposite/adjacent
tan 52^(∘) = x/13
Solve for x
tan 52^(∘) * 13 = x
16.63924...=x
16.64≈ x
x≈ 16.64