Question

Item 9

A painter is hired to paint a mural on the side of a 16-foot-tall building. The painter wants to use the entire height of the building to paint a scale drawing of a skyscraper that is in the city. The skyscraper is 800 feet tall. What is the scale factor of the painting?

Answer 1

If the painting on the skyscraper is scaled to the painting on the 16 feet tall building, the scale factor will be
`(1)/(50)`.

Step-by-step explanation:

• The original painting was on the side of an 800 feet tall building. So assume the painting's length to be 800 feet. The painter plans to scale the same painting on to a 16 feet tall building. So after scaling, the length of the painting will be 16 feet.
• To calculate the scale factor, we divide the measurement after scaling by the same measurement before scaling. In this case, it is the painting's length. So The scale factor =
  `(paintinglengthafterscaling)/(paintinglengthbeforescaling)` =
  `(16)/(800)` =
  `(1)/(50)`.