Question

A shadow 16 meters long is cast by a water tower that is 12 meters tall. if a maypole close by casts a shadow 12 meters long, how tall is the maypole?

Answer 1

The proportion of height-shadow of the two objects is the same.
Make a comparison of height-shadow

`\frac{\text{height}}{\text{shadow}}= \frac{\text{height}}{\text{shadow}}`

In this case, the proportion will be

`\frac{\text{maypole height}}{\text{maypole shadow}}= \frac{\text{towerheight}}{\text{towershadow}}`

Plug in the numbers
for an instance, h stands for the height of maypole we want to find.

`(h)/(12)= (12)/(16)`

Do cross multiplication
16h = 12 × 12
16h = 144
h = 144/16
h = 9
The height of the maypole is 9 meters