There is no correct answer! When the wind blows the tree's height changes; it possibly changes height during the day as transpiration alters the turgor pressure; probably changes by season as the leaves weigh down the branches; and it certainly changes height year by year. But there are plenty of wrong answers: it is clearly not 50kg high, or 500m or 500mm and if you're being scientific you should include an estimate of the error associated with your answer. Most importantly there is for certain sure no single method for obtaining the answer. So I urge you to think out your own uniquely creative and clever solution before trudging below the fold in the footsteps of some random 15 year-olds.
Last chance!
Here are some of the answers:
1) 2.5 rugger goal posts - a good stab but not very useful if you wish to have a pissing competition with the University of Budapest about who has the tallest tree and they've never heard of Rugby let alone seen just how tall the goal posts are. Not for nothing was Latin the language of educated discourse for 1000 years - it minimised misunderstanding.
2) 17 Seans. Sean, being the tallest team-member, was required to stand next to the tree while the others stepped back across the rugger pitch and estimated how many Seans would need to stand on the shoulders of Seans to be the same height as the tree.
2a) 100ft as a conversion from Seans to feet: the lad being 6ft tall. The same issues apply here to measuring in rugger-posts. Those Hungarians don't know how big a foot is.
3) put a metre-square cardboard standing adjacent to the tree then step back and digitally photograph the tree. Put the photo onto a computer and use the square for scale to establish height.
3a) . . . but you have a photo already and the cardboard square can be replaced by bricks or windows in the adjacent building. Measure one brick - count bricks - multiply together - multiply by 1.6 because the tree is 3.4cm tall and the building only 2.1cm.
4) "The native North Americans used to stand with their back to the tree, mountain, cliff in question and bend over to scrutinize the object through their own legs . . . " the proposer of this method got a little lost at this stage as to how to progress it to an answer in Seans, Rugger-posts or meters.
4a) What the NNAs might have been using was the method of similar triangles. The bending over being a way of getting the eyes close to the ground.


5) Trigonometry? This has come up many times, more usually in the Socratic discussion than 'in the field'. Many teens know that Tan =O/A because they have rote-learned SOH-CAH-TOA and this can be used to solve the problem so long as a) you have a sextant or at least a protractor to measure the angle and b) you have a set of trig tables (or a scientific calculator). I've seen a nifty Ap that tells you what constellation your phone is pointing at so there must be some angle-measuring device embedded and a smart-phone will quickly retrieve your trig tables.
6) "Pace out the shadow at midday on the equinox while knowing the latitude or declination or something?". This is getting close to an articulation of the method Eratosthenes used to calculate the circumference of the earth but won't work in the present case because the tree stands at the N side of the open ground and will cast its shadow over the roof-scape.
7) Pythagoras! I can't see how this helps but it's often come up in discussion, probably because both his theorem and trigonometry involve triangles?
8) Your answer here ...
Moving on and up from trees to the moon, it turns out that the moon has a diameter of about 3400km and an average distance of 384,000km - the ratio between the two distances is about 0.9% or 9 parts in a thousand. This is very close to the ratio between the width of your pinkie finger-nail and your arms-length and mine - smaller fingers go with shorter arms. You can verify/refute this next time you see the moon. The moon's orbit is quite eccentric, however, its closest distance (perigee) is about 10% closer than its furthest (apogee). Easily enough to be measurable by an ordinary person.
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