Is there a way to work out the height of a building without measuring it??

Question

my teacher said that next lesson (thursady) to make the lesson interesting

we could go outside and we have to figure out a way to measure the height of the building...without actually measuring it.

i'm guessing its something to do with shadows but im not sure what exactly it is

if you have any ideas please let me know... if we dont have any ideas for the lesson we'll have to do text book work for the whole lesson (boring)

thanks in advance =D

x*x

Answer 1

There are many ways to do this.  Take your GPS up to the top of the building and check altitude.  Then check it at the bottom and subtract.

You can also do it by measuring the length of the shadow and the angle of the sun above the horizon.  Then multiplying the length times the tangent of the angle.  The problem is you need a sextant to measure the angle of the sun.

You can do it without the sextant by  measuring your own shadow on the ground and comparing to your height.  The ratio of height to shadow is the same for you and the building.  (It is also the tangent of the angle of the sun above the horizon.)

A quick and dirty way is to have somebody stand next to the building while you stand some distance away.   Hold up a ruler or tape measure, and measure the height of your friend and the height of the building on the ruler.  Then divide to get a ratio.  Multiply the ratio by the height of the friend.

You can get an approximation by counting the number of floors, (each floor usually has a row of windows) and multiplying by 10 feet.  If you measure the actual height of one floor, you can get a more accurate estimate.

If it is a brick building you can count the number of courses of brick and multiply by 4 inches.  If it is concrete block, use 8 inches.

You could drop something from the top of the building and measure the time it takes to hit the ground, but this takes some fancy calculations, and some experiments to determine the terminal velocity of the object.

If you want to do some detective work, you could see if you can find the plans for the building, and they will tell you exactly how tall it is.

Answer 2

Use Trignometry

Answer 3

Trigonemetry. You will probably be using tangent. Should be in your textbook, so go and check it out. Hint: tan x (angle, measurable) = opposite side(height) / adjacent side (measurable).

Answer 4

I think these jokes tell you almost all possible ways (except trigonometry?) http://www.workjoke.com/barometer.htm

You can also use small object (stick). Put stick in front of you so that when you look "behind" the stick it looks like that the stick is as tall as the building. Now turn the stick 90 degrees measure distance from that point to the corner of the building and it should be approximately same as the height of the building.

Also you can do this the other way around and ask you friend to stand next to the building and measure how meany times taller is the building than your friend . Now multiply your friends height with your measure.

For both of these you havo to be as far as possible from the building, infinity is recommended ;)

Answer 5

By measuring the angle from a distance,then the distance,by trigonometry,you can calculate the height.