To determine the height of the building, we'll use trigonometry, specifically the tangent function, because we have the length of the shadow (which acts as the adjacent side to the angle of elevation) and the angle of elevation itself.
The tangent of an angle in a right triangle is equal to the length of the opposite side divided by the length of the adjacent side (tan(θ) = opposite/adjacent).
Here, the angle of elevation is 35° and the length of the shadow (adjacent side) is 26 feet. Let's denote the height of the building (opposite side) as h.
We have:
tan(35°) = h / 26
To find the height h, we rearrange the formula to solve for h:
h = tan(35°) * 26
Now we use the value obtained from the earlier calculation (which was done with the help of a calculator or computer):
h ≈ 18.205395993452452 feet
We can round this to a suitable level of precision, which is typically to two decimal places in most practical applications. So the height of the building is approximately:
h ≈ 18.21 feet
Therefore, the correct answer from the given options is:
18.21 ft
