Do you know how to extrapolate the height of the steps in this pic?

Question

It's a stair climber type exercise machine. Take a look:
http://i7.tinypic.com/210cac2.jpg

The length of the base is 30.25" and the width is 16.25", but the catalog does not list how high the foot pedals go.

Can you figure out how high the step is at the height shown in the pic, from the heel to the ground? And what formula did you use?

Thanks

Answer 1

I'd guess about 15.25" from the heel to the ground. I made the assumption that distance from the camera (and therefore scaling factor) varies linearly along a straight line in the picture, and that the scaling factor at the midpoint of the base would be the scaling factor along the whole vertical line passing through it. These assumptions are not trigonometrically accurate, but for estimating dimensions of a single object centered in the picture, they are close enough. As such, I just measured the height, in pixels, from the left corner of the left heel to the ground, did the same for the right corner of the right heel, and took the average of them to get the vertical height (which turned out to be 100 pixels), and then measured the distance along the base from the left posterior to the right posterior, at the point where the pad touched the ground. This distance was 93 pixels horizontal, and 52 vertical, which by the pythagorean theorem gives roughly 106.5 pixels. Knowing that the width was 16.25", I then worked out the height of about 15.25" as a simple matter of proportion. This is probably accurate to within half an inch.

Answer 2

about 8-12 inches

Answer 3

yes I can. It will cost more than 2 points for me to tell you how.