Streaming TV shows and movies directly to your home is a breeze with Netflix. As a Netflix member, you can instantly watch TV and movies on your PC, Mac, mobile device, or television. Get a free thirty day trial membership. Go to Netflix dot com, slash stuff and sign up today. Welcome to brainstuff front house, stuff works dot com where smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question. How
can you measure the height of a tall tower? There are several different techniques you can use depending on where the tower is located. These same techniques can be used to measure trees in your yard, mountains, tall buildings in downtown areas, and so on. Here are three of the most commonly used techniques. If the tower is sitting in the middle of a flat field, probably the easiest technique to use is its shadow. On a sunny day, take a broomstick, a ham, and a measuring tape with you.
Pound the broomstick into the ground a few inches so it stands up on its own. If you are patient, you can wait until the length of the broomsticks shadow is equal to the length of the visible broomstick, and then go measure the length of the tower shadow. The length of the shadow tells you the height of the tower directly. If you are impatient, you can first measure the length of the broomsticks shadow. Second, calculate the ratio
of the broomsticks shadow length to the broomsticks height. Third, measure the tower shadow, and then forth apply the ratio to discover the tower's height. For the second technique, you need a drinking straw, a protractor, some scotch tape, and a measuring tape. Tape the drinking straw to the protractor at a forty five degree angle. Hold the protractor with its flat side level to the horizon, and then sight
through the drinking straw. Walk a distance away from the tower tree until you can see the top of the tower or through the straw. Since you're sighting the top of the tower at a forty five degree angle, your distance from the tower is equal to the height of the tower. Measure your distance from the tower and you know it's height. For the third technique, you need to protract or drinking straw, tape, measure, and a calculator that
will handle trigger and metric functions. Stand somewhere where you can easily measure your distance to the tower. Sight through the drinking straw and find the top of the tower, and then measure the angle between the straw and the horizon using the protractor. Let's say the angle is fifty five degrees and the distance to the base is two feet. The equation to use is height of the tower equals distance of the tower times the tangent of the angle.
Don't forget to add the height of the protractor when you measure the angle to the height of the tower. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at house off works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain Stuff blog on the how stuff works dot com home page. This episode of brain Stuff is brought to you by
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