Question 1172121

A telephone pole casts a shadow that is 30 feet long. At the same time, a man standing nearby who is 6 feet tall casts a shadow that is 4 feet 6 inches long. How tall is the telephone pole to the nearest foot?

When I solved this I got 40 feet. I'm not sure if that is correct, but here is the steps I took:

1. Converted 4ft into 48in by multiplying 4x12 then I added 6, Total: 54in.
2. Then I took 6x12 and got 72 and took 30x12 and got 360.
3. The proportion formula I used was height / shadow = height / shadow. 
4. I plugged in the numbers 54 / 72 = x / 360 and cross multiplied and divided 
5. Result, I got 480 and divided by 12 to convert back into feet since that is what the question wanted.
6. As a final answer I got 40
<pre>Your answer is correct, but it involves too many UNNECESSARY calculations!
You're right in using a proportion to solve, but when you look at the man's shadow, you should see that it's easier to keep it in feet, since 4 feet, 6 inches = {{{matrix(1,4, 4&1/2, or, 4.5, feet)}}}
{{{matrix(1,3, matrix(1,2, "Man's", shadow)/matrix(1,2, "Man's", height), "=", matrix(1,2, "Pole's", shadow)/matrix(1,2, "Pole's", height))}}} <====== Keeping with your proportion, and by letting "x" be the pole's height.
          {{{matrix(1,3, 4.5/6, "=", 30/x)}}}
          4.5x = 6(30) ------ Cross-multiplying
          Pole's height, or {{{highlight_green(matrix(1,6, x, "=", 6(30)/4.5, "=", 40, feet))}}}