During our week 5 in math 10 we continued to learn about trigonometry, while we learned about a new topic of word problems. I usually do not like word problems and find them very difficult to solve, but while doing the trigonometry problems i understood and took interest in them. There are quite a few steps you should do in order to solve the problem properly and find the correct answer.

Step 1: Read the word problem and pull out information

A fireman is trying to save a child from a burning building. The child is in a window 10ft off the ground, the fireman places his ladder at an angle of elevation of 70 degrees. How long must he extend his ladder to reach the window?

important information: child is 10ft up FROM THE GROUND.

The angle of elevation is 70 degrees

Step2 2: draw and label your triangle:

Step 3: figure out which rule you should solve with in this case you are using both the opposite side and the hypotenuse so you will need:

Step 4: From here you see x cannot be on the bottom. So you must multiply x by 10 over x, once you do one thing to one side you must apply it to the other side:

Once have done this you should, like every word problem, add a sentence describing the answer:

The length of the ladder has to be 10.6ft to reach the window.