The height of an isosceles trapezoid is 6 units and the bases have lenght 4 and 20 units. find the angle?

Question

The height of an isosceles trapezoid is 6 units and the bases have lenght 4 and 20 units. find the angle?

Answer 1

the base angle is 37

Answer 2

the answer is 30.47 degrees. (assuming the angle you want is between the bottom face and the slanted height)

This could be done in one of 2 ways, each generating the same value:

Pythagoras:

using pythagoras once work out the lngth of one corner to the centre of the base. use pythagoras again to work out the slanted height of the trapezoid. Using trigonometry calculate the angle from these 2 lengths.

Vectors:

Using the dot product bewteen the point on the top of the trapezoid and the point directly below on the base, and assigning the origin as the base