How tall is Chicago’s Batcolumn? 4/10/12

Notes

What is it? Claes Oldenburg designed the Batcolumn pictured to the right. It is a symbol of the city’s ambition and vigor.

The Situation On a warm day in April a news crew shows up at the Batcolumn. They offered to give the first tourist who could find the height of the bat without using their cellphone or engaging in illegal activities $1000.

Materials Provided Clinometer Scientific Calculator Tape Measure

What would you do? What measurements could you legally make? Make a diagram to show your thinking. I will provide you with the appropriate measurements and calculators when I can see your plan.

Here’s the winners thinking Since I am trying to find the Opposite side of my triangle and I know the adjacent side I will use Tangent. Since the scale factor is 20, I multiplied 20 by the tan(55). 20tan(55) = 28.56m 20 m 55  ?

Here’s the winners thinking Since I am trying to find the adjacent side of my triangle and I know the opposite side I will use tangent. tan(35) =.7 From here I can never remember if I multiply or divide. So I tried both until I got an answer that made sense So = 28.57m 20 m 35  ? 55 

Your Turn ◦ Draw a right triangle. ◦ Label the information you can collect for the height of the double decker bus. ◦ Set-up a trig ratio to find each missing side. ◦ Solve your ratios and label your diagram. ◦ Use Pythagorean theorem to check to make sure you found the right sides.