Question

Please help:

Salome measures the length of the shadow she casts as well as the length of the shadow cast by her school. Her shadow measured 8 feet while the school's shadow measured 60 feet. If Salome is 5.2 feet tall, how tall is her school?​

Answer 1

Her school is 38.42 feet tall.

First, we need to find the scale factor of the school’s shadow to Salome’s shadow. This is 60/8 or 7.5

Now, we can use the Pythagorean theorem to find the length of the hypotenuse formed by the distance from the top of Salome to the end of her shadow. This gives us 9.54 feet. Since the school is 7.5 times as big, the schools hypotenuse is 71.25 feet.

Now, we use the Pythagorean theorem to find the height of the school. I’ve shown the whole process below