Find the component of a velocity vector of an airplane that is traveling 150 mph at 45° below horizontal.

First, you need to remember how to obtain the answer.

1) (velocity) * (cosine of the angle) 2) (velocity) * (sine of the angle)

Since the plane is traveling 45 degrees below the horizon the angle that we will be using is 180+45=225.

Therefore we will have,

150 * cos (225) = - 81.31

150*sin (225) = - 81.31

*In the unit circle, the coordinates of 225 are - squareroot (2) divided by 2 for both sin and cos, which explains why we have the same answer for both sin and cos.

The answer being negative makes sense since the speed is decreasing due to the fact that the plane is traveling below horizontal.