Trigonometry and bearings

icm777 · #1 Jul 20, 2008, 07:08 PM

A plane is 150 miles north and 100 miles east of an airport. What bearings should be taken to fly directly to the airport?

Unknown008 · Jul 20, 2008, 07:18 PM

You need a drawing to understand more properly. Having done so will show you that you have a right angled triangle. Use the tangent rule to find the angle you need. However, remember that bearings are according to the north.

KeepItSimpleStupid · Jul 20, 2008, 07:25 PM

Tmporarily do the follwing. Put the airport at the origin. Draw where the plane is. Now move the triangle that you drew so the plane is at the origin.

Now you should be able to calculate bearing.

Unknown008 · Jul 20, 2008, 08:29 PM

But it's for you to do the drawing! Ok, here it goes:

Unknown008 · Jul 20, 2008, 08:31 PM

By using tangent rule, you have angle inside the triangle, at the plane. To have the bearing, do 360 degrees minus 90 degrees and minus the angle you obtained from the tangent rule.

$tan \theta = \frac{150}{100}$



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