How fast is the car traveling?

Our group was assigned a problem with a person standing on top of a building 120 feet
high. He is observing a car for five seconds as it drives toward the building with an angle of
depression of 25° to 45°. We needed to find out the distance the car traveled and the speed it was
traveling at for the 5 seconds the car was being observed. The information that was given to us is
the building's height, the two angles of depression and the 5 seconds the car was observed. Our
investigation showed that the car was traveling at 18.27 mph in the five seconds it was observed
from the angle of depression of 25° to 45°.
Before we could solve the problem we had to know the formula for speed and the
conversion factors needed to get a finalized answer with mph. We assumed that we would use
the speed formula and researched on the conversion factors needed to solve this problem. Other
assumptions made were that the two triangles were right triangles both with a height of 120 feet.
In order to solve this problem we would need to use the trig function to find the bases of triangle
X​ and ​Y​. After that we would subtract the two bases to get the distance and plug that into the
speed formula which is speed = distance
time
. The last step for this problem is to convert the answer
we got from the speed formula into mph.

One of the assumptions we made was that triangle ​X,​ side c, would be 120 ft long. We assumed
this because triangle ​Y,​ side ​a, ​should be parallel to triangle X, side c. We arrived at this
understanding by observing that the two triangles, placed side by side constitute a rectangle.
Another assumption was that both triangle ​X​ and ​Y​ have a 90° angle. The reason being that the
overall shape is a rectangle and thus has four 90°.The first step to solving the problem is finding
side ​a​ for triangle ​X​:

tan45° = 120
a
a = the base of triangle X
a = 120f t

The justification for this is that we needed to know how long side ​a​ is for triangle ​X​ in order for
us to find out the distance from the building to the car from the viewing point of 45°. We used
tangent because we were given the opposite side along with its corresponding angle which meant
that we needed to use the function tangent. The next step was for us to find side ​b ​for triangle ​Y​:
 b
tan65° = 120
b = the missing side we are looking f or
b = 257.34f t

The justification for this is that it would give us the distance from the building to the car at the
starting position, which would then allow us to subtract both sides ​a​ and ​b ​to find the distance
the car traveled when the angle of depression changed from 25° to 45°. Again, we needed to use
tangent since we were given the opposite side along with its corresponding angle. The next step
after that was to use the speed formula:
 speed = 134.34
5
speed = 27.47f t/s

The reason was because we found the distance from the angle of depression of 25° to 45° and we
were given the time, which were the two factors we needed in order to use the speed formula.
This also allowed us to know the car’s speed in feet per second. The next step after this one was
to convert feet per second into feet per hour.
27.47f t/sec × 3600 sec = 98, 892f t/hr

The reason being that it made it easier for us to do the last step. We calculated 3,600 seconds
because that is how many seconds there are in an hour. The last step for us was to convert the
feet per hour into miles per hour.
98,892f t/hr
5,280f t/mi
= 18.73 mph

The reasoning for this was to change our answer to miles per hour. We used 5,280 in the
equation above because that is how many feet there are in a mile, which will then change our
answer from feet per hour to miles per hour. The answer to this problem is that the car traveled a
total distance of 137.34 feet in 5 seconds with a speed of 18.73 mph.
 From this problem I learned to critically think about how to solve a problem that has
more than one solution to it. I also gained a better understanding of angles of depression, which
is one of the things we needed clarification on since at first we did not understand what it is.
Some other ways you could solve this problem other than using trig functions was to use the
laws of sine and the laws of cosine. If we were to have changed an assumption then our answer
could have changed drastically and would have been more challenging to solve.