We have always encountered what is the use of a lighthouse and why it always emits light around the tower ?

Back in the days, lighthouses were used for aerial navigation for big ships, boats or anyone stranded in the water. Let’s relate it to Mathematics and find out how we can calculate distance between two ships.

Trigonometry is one of the fields of Mathematics that studies relationships between side lengths and angles of triangles. Trigonometry is all about right angled triangles where the concept of height and distance comes into picture to measure objects in vertical and horizontal direction respectively.

Now, let’s deep dive into a few terms which is required to calculate the distance of ships.

Let be some angle where Base or Adjacent is next to angle , Perpendicular or Opposite is opposite to angle and the longest side is called Hypotenuse.
Main functions in Trigonometry are Sine, Cosine & Tangent where

Sin = Opposite / Hypotenuse

Cos = Base / Hypotenuse

Tan = Opposite / Base

Angle of Elevation is the angle at which an observer views the top most point of any object like tower, building, or lighthouse.
Angle of Depression is the angle at which an observer views the object when the observer is on top of any tower, building or lighthouse.

HEIGHT AND DISTANCE USING LIGHTHOUSE