Question

a flagpole casts a shadow that is 28 ft long. At the same time, a stick is a 2 ft tall has a shadow that is 3.5 ft long. How tall is the flagpole?

Answer 1

We could just solve this using proportions,

`\frac{flagpole\text{ length}}{\text{flagpole shadow length}}=\frac{stick\text{ length}}{\text{stick shadow length}}`

Thus, we have

`\begin{gathered} (x)/(28)=(2)/(3.5) \\ \text{cross multiply} \\ 3.5x=56 \\ \text{divide both sides by 3.5} \\ x=16ft \end{gathered}`

The flagpole is 16ft long.