Question

A pole 6m high has a shadow 10 m long when the shadow of a nearby building is 220 m long. How tall is the building?

Which ratio is equal to the ratio of the height of the building to its shadow?

Answer 1

By using the similar triangles principle, the height of the building is found to be 132 meters. We find this by setting up a proportion between the known ratios of the pole's height to its shadow and solving for the building's height.

Step-by-step explanation:

We can solve the problem using similar triangles. The ratio of the height of the pole to its shadow is the same as the ratio of the height of the building to its shadow. Since the height of the pole is 6m and its shadow is 10m, we have the ratio of the height to the shadow for the pole as 6/10 or 3/5.

This ratio will be equal to the ratio of the height of the building (which we'll call h) to the shadow of the building (220 m), so we can write the proportion as:

3/5 = h/220

Now we solve for h:

3/220 = h/5

h = (3/5) × 220

h = (3 × 44)

h = 132m

So the height of the building is 132m.