SOLUTION: the shadow of a tree is 10 meters long, the shadow a meter stick is .4 meters long. how tall is the tree? 25 meters? do you multiply .4 meters by 10 meters? Or do you convert to

Question 66709: the shadow of a tree is 10 meters long, the shadow a meter stick is .4 meters long. how tall is the tree? 25 meters?
do you multiply .4 meters by 10 meters? Or do you convert to feet and divide?
Found 2 solutions by Earlsdon, stanbon:
Answer by Earlsdon(6294) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Think about similar triangles in which corresponding sides are proportional.
In one of the triangles, you have the height which represents the height of the tree and the base which represents the length of the tree's shadow.
In the other triangle, you have the height which represents the metre stick and the base which represents the length of the stick's shadow.
So, based on the above, we can write and solve a proportion in which h = the height of the tree. It goes like this:
The height of the tree : the height of the metre stick as the length of the tree's shadow is to the length of the metre stick's shadow.
In algebrese, this looks like:

...and since the given dimensions were in metres, the answer is:
h = 25 metres.
Answer by stanbon(75887) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
the shadow of a tree is 10 meters long, the shadow a meter stick is .4 meters long. how tall is the tree? 25 meters?
------------
Let the tree be "x" meters high.
Then x/10=1/0.4
Multiply both sides by 10 to get:
x=10/0.4
x=1/(4/10)
x=100/4
x=25 meters
The tree is 25 meters high.
Cheers,
Stan H.

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