having difficulties with math problem.

I'm having a lot of trouble with this question. If anyone is getting a different answer than me, then please help me out here.

'The vertical sides of a water glass are each 12cm in length and the diameter of the glass is 5cm. If the water in the glass is 2cm from the top, through what angle, θ , can the glass be tipped before water spills over the side?'

Every time I work through this I get θ=13.8464˚

The answer key is giving me θ=38.7˚

Either I'm not doing this right or the textbook is wrong, which is entirely possible.

Anyways, help with this would be extremely appreciated.

Well I'm not a mathametician ....but it isn't 13 degrees so I bet 38.7

TRY IT Hope it helps ..KUHL

PS I used vodka

thanks for the reply, but that didn't help me at all, lol.

It's simple trig, anyone here able to help?

OK, I got the answer your book got. I haven't taken trig for like 16 years so take this with a grain of salt...



edit:

Actually after I wrote that I realized you don't even have to figure out the length of the hypotenuse, you can just do:

arctan (2/2.5) = 38.65981° ≈ 38.7°

[edit on 12/17/2006 by djohnsto77]

did you divide the adjacent side by 2 because the area was a triangle?

thanks alot johnsto77 for helping me out. I've been stumped on this all night, i wasn't looking at it the right way.


[edit on 17-12-2006 by enthuziazm]

I divided it in two, since that would be where the distance from the edge to the waterlevel would still be 2 cm as long as no water spilled out.