Can someone explain angle of elevation and depression?

Question

I'm working on geometry homework and i don't understand what the angle of elevation or the angle of depression is or how to find them. I want to do the work myself but i was wondering if anyone could explain what they are and how to find them?

Answer 1

A line segment ( part of a line ) drawn parallel to the surface is at 0 degrees.  If you tilt the line up you have a positive angle called angle of elevation.   If you tilt the line down, the negative angle is called the angle of depression.

Answer 2

Angle of elevation if the angle formed by your eye horizontally and what you look up at. For example, lets say you're looking at your friend and suddenly you hear a plane and you look up. The angle of elevation would be the angle formed by drawing a line from your eye to your friend and then drawing another line from your eye to the plane.

plane

../

./

/θ____friend

An angle of elevation would be something like that. θ is the angle. Your eye is at the vertex, your friend is straight across from the vertex and the plane is up at the end of that diagonal line segment

Now an angle of depression is the angle formed when you look down at something. For example, lets say you're on the top of a building looking straight across and suddenly you hear you're friend calling you from below You look down at your friend below. The angle formed by drawing a line from your eye straight across and drawing a line from your eye down to your friend is the angle of depression.

_______across from top of building

\θ

.\

..\friend

So the angle of depression is the angle formed when you move your eye from looking across the top of the building to look down at your friend.

Hope that helps you understand it. If you still need help, feel free to go to my profile and email me and I'll try to assist you.