50 foot tree casts a 40 foot shadow what is the angle at the top of the tree?
Since a triangle has 180 degrees and the angle made by the ground and the tree is 90 degrees, the angle made by the tree and the hypotenuse is 180 - (90 + 51.54), which is 38.66 degrees. I'd be happy to go into more detail if you'd like.
You could also calculate the inverse tangent of (40/50). In this case, you would be dealing directly with the angle formed by the tree and the hypotenuse.
first ill cover "sohcahtoa."
this stands for:
"Sin:Opposite/Hypotenuse, Cosine: Adjacent/Hypotenuse, Tangent: Opposite/Adjacent"
for right triangles, you can do something like this:
Consider the right triangle made by the ground and the tree. To find the angle made by the tree and the hypotenuse of this triangle, first identify how the sides of the triangle relate to this angle. The adjacent side of this triangle is the tree, which is 50 feet, while the opposite side of this triangle is the length of the shadow, which is 40 feet. Look above at sohcahtoa. We can see that tangent of this triangle is opposite / adjacent. To find the desired angle here, we take inverse tan (40/50), which equals 38.66 degrees.
Use this: Right Triangle Angle And Side Calculator