In: Physics
An archaeologist is trying to measure the height of a small
window in an old tower. He brought
an instrument that allows him to measure angles with great
precision and accuracy, but arithmetic
is not one of his strengths and he unforunately forgot to bring a
calculator. He can, however, do
simple additions and multiplications. To measure the window, he
stands at a distance of 120 m
from the base of the tower from where he sees the bottom of the
window frame under an angle of
Pi/4 rad and the top of the frame under an angle of pi/4+0.005 rad.
He remembers what he
learned from his youth and manages to compute the height of the
window to
an accuracy of 1 cm. If an archaeolgist can do this, then so can
you. Compute the height of the
window by using the quadratic Taylor polynomial of tan theta around
theta=Pi/4.