Can you imagine what role triangles play in air travel? If you think about the motion of a jet during takeoff, you can probably visualize the acute angle formed by the runway and the jet's climb into the sky. If you were the jet's pilot or copilot, though, you would be thinking about angles and triangles all of the time! As an airliner flies from one city to another, the pilot turns the plane at different angles based on the flight's final destination and what kind of weather or turbulence the plane encounters.
Suppose a plane departs from city A and travels to city B, then continues on to city C, finally making its way back to city A. What triangle would be created by the plane's flight path? What kinds of angles would appear inside this triangle?
Question
If you use a protractor to measure angles A, B, and C, you would see that A is 55°, B is 85°, and C is 40°. How many degrees are inside this triangle all together?