Why is my solution wrong? Here is the scenario: \"A person looks at the top of a

Question

Why is my solution wrong? Here is the scenario: "A person looks at the top of a building while standing 85m away from the building. His sight line makes a 35-degree angle respect to the ground. He looks at a flying bird above the building and this time his sight line makes a 38-degree angle respect to the ground. How high is the bird respect to the top of the building?" My solution was to find 85/cos 35, square it, and add it to the square of 85 to find the height of the building, then find 85/cos 38, square it, and add it to the square of 85 to find the height of the bird (of course I would take the square roots of the answers I got, leaving me with Building: 134m, Bird: 137m) and then subtract the two, leaving me with a solution of 3m. But this answer was marked incorrect! The correct solution was 85(tan 38 - tan 35) = 6.9m. But I can't figure out why MY solution was wrong! It's driving me crazy. Any ideas?

Explanation / Answer

85/costhtea is hypotenous so you have subtract instead of addition

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