Aranger spots a forest fire while on a 60-meter observation tower. the angle of depression from the tower to the fire is 25°. to the nearest meter, how far is the fire from the base of the tower?

27.98ft

You can get this by using the tangent formula. The answer exactly expressed is 60tan25.

So the first thing we do is to multiply the top equation by 3. the reason i want to do this is i notice there will be a 6y on both equations and can possibly add/subtract them. so we get 6y = -3x + 27. adding that and the second equation we get 6x = 27-15 which is 12. divide by 6 and we get 2. ∴ x = 2. substituting 2 into the first equation we get 2y = -2 + 9 which is 7. divide by 2 and we get 7/2. ∴ y = 7/2, x = 2.