Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Use the Law of Sines to solve oblique triangles.
- Find the area of an oblique triangle using the sine function.
- Solve applied problems using the Law of Sines.
Suppose two radar stations located 20 miles apart each detect an aircraft between them. The angle of elevation measured by the first station is 35 degrees, whereas the angle of elevation measured by the second station is 15 degrees. How can we determine the altitude of the aircraft? We see in Figure 1 that the triangle formed by the aircraft and the two stations is not a right triangle, so we cannot use what we know about right triangles. In this section, we will find out how to solve problems involving non-right triangles.