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

$\begin{gathered} \frac{x}{28}=\frac{2}{3.5} \\ \text{cross multiply} \\ 3.5x=56 \\ \text{divide both sides by 3.5} \\ x=16ft \end{gathered}$

The flagpole is 16ft long.