Marilyn is having shelves installed to create a corner pantry. the length of one wall is 21 inches and the length of the other wall is 25 inches. the contractor who is making the shelves, which are shaped like right triangles, needs to know the measure of the angle opposite the short side of the pantry, m

You can use trig here - you want to know the angle opposite from the shortest side, which we'll call "A," and you have the sides that touch the right angle. side A (21 inches) and side B (25 inches) intersect at a right angle, so the side we're missing is the hypotenuse. the angle across from side A is angle "a" - now, since we know which side is the hypotenuse, we can figure out which trig function works here. angle "a" can be found by doing tan(a)=Opposite/Adjacent --> tan(a)=A/B --> tan(a)=21/25 --> a=tan^-1(21/25). a = 40.03 degrees