The Great Flagpole Problem

My daughter had an extra credit geometry assignment with several problems on it, one of which required her "team" to calculate the height of the flagpole at El Toro High (go Chargers).
The team solution on how to accomplish this? Go into the office and ask, "how high is the flagpole?"

Incredibly, since they were the first team to think of this, someone in the office told them the answer.

I am told that in a prior year, a student tried to shimmy up the flagpole with a tape measure.
Keep in mind these are "honors" geometry students that, by the end of the year certainly, are supposed to be aware of salient geometric facts such as the trigonometric ratios of a right triangle.

For those of you who have faded a little on that, consider:

The tanget of the angle would be equal to opp/adj. Image the flagpole as "opp." Hmm, if we measured the flagpole's shadow we would have "adj." Did you ever consider that maybe the angle would be roughly the sun over the horizon that casts said shadow?

Geez. Sounds simpler than shimmying up the darn thing. Here's a link to where you can get the sun's altitude over the horizon in degrees: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/AltAz.html Another method would be to eyeball it with a protractor.

I hope that's enough hints for a student who gets a Goolge hit on this.