the base of the ladder is 27.89 ft away from the building
Step-by-step explanation:
Notice that this situation can be represented with a right angle triangle. The right angle being that made between the ground and the building, the ladder (32 ft long) being the hypotenuse of the triangle, the acute angle of being adjacent to the unknown side we are asked about (x). So, we can use the cosine function to solve this: