By no means am I a genius or a math whiz, however I was able to successfully answer the question, "when are we ever going to use this trig' in real life?"

My oldest step-daughter was 14 and staying with us for the summer. She was about 5'3" at the time and I'm 6'1". She was continually moving the showerhead angle down which caused me (early morning and blurry-eyed) to continually crack my head into the wall, and after many 'discussions' I decided to pull out the old Trig. She's pretty good at math, so I knew she'd be able to grasp the info I was giving her. Her reasoning for moving the showerhead angle down was so she could stand further away from the wall (what?! ) and I told her it was making her stand closer and causing me to be so close to the wall that I'd knock my head into it if I wasn't awake enough to remember to move the showerhead back. I drew a triangle with measurements from the height of the shower head and the length of the bathtub. I then made a line inside the triangle to show my height and a second line showing her height. Then I changed the angles of the hyp to show the change in angle of the showerhead. After some good old-fashioned Trig, we can to the conclusion that she needed to leave the showerhead along because it was making her (and me) stand closer to the wall, not further away as she'd originally thought.

Who says that stuff isn't useful??

I enjoyed your story. Pretty tricky. I like that.

But, seriously, for those who wonder where trig is used in real life applications... surveying. It is used extensively in construction and surveying fields.