Question

Sharon is decreasing the size of a diagram of a leaf that is 30 centimeters long by 10 centimeters wide. If the reduced diagram is 4 centimeters wide, how long would it be?

Answer 1

Length = 10 cm

Explanation:

The scaled down diagram would be proportional to the original diagram. That means, we can write a ratio of Length : Width for both and find the unknown.

Let the length of the reduced diagram be "x", thus we can say,

If 30 is to 10 (length is to width), then x is to 4

We can translate this into algebraic equation (ratio) as shown below:

`(30)/(10)=(x)/(4)`

Now, we cross multiply and solve for x:

`(30)/(10)=(x)/(4)\\10x=30*4\\10x=120\\x=(120)/(10)\\x=12`

So,

the reduced diagram has a leaf with length 10 cm