Flag Pole Lab Math 2018

The flagpole lab was meant for the class to work in partners to determine the height of the flagpole outside of our school. We went out to the flags and chose how far away we were to stand from the base of the flag pole using a trundle wheel to measure the distance. Emily Dickson was my partner and we decided to stand 5.2 meters away from the flagpole. While Emily was looking through the clinometer, I stood on the side and waited for the weight to steady to read the angle of elevation. Once we got the measurements we headed back to class to finish my calculations. We had to use trigonometry to determine the height of the flagpole. We had the angle, 41.5 degrees and the adjacent side length of 5.2 meters. We used tan in our calculation to find the height, then had to add the height of Emily’s eye to the ground and add that to the previous answer to come up with the total height of the flagpole, 5.93 meters. Using trigonometry is useful because if we have the right tools such as a clinometer, we can quickly and easily calculate side lengths or even angles if we have the right requirements.