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acidj14
Nov 19, 2007, 05:04 PM
The Texas star at Fair Park in Dallas, Texas, is the tallest ferris wheel in the United States. A 2 1/2- FOOT TALL CHILD STANDING NEXT TO THE FERRIS WHEEL CAST A 2 FOOT SHADOW AT THE SAME TIME THE FERRIS WHEELS SHADOWS IS 170 FEET.HOW TALL IS THE TEXAS STAR

Can anyone tell me the proportion for it

asterisk_man
Nov 19, 2007, 06:18 PM
What do you think? (show your work)

hauser5
Nov 19, 2007, 08:17 PM
The texas star at Fair Park in Dallas, Texas, is the tallest ferris wheel in the United States. A 2 1/2- FOOT TALL CHILD STANDING NEXT TO THE FERRIS WHEEL CAST A 2 FOOT SHADOW AT THE SAME TIME THE FERRIS WHEELS SHADOWS IS 170 FEET.HOW TALL IS THE TEXAS STAR

can anyone tell me the proportion for it
I will try and figure this out while I am typing, so let's see... for every two feet of shadow of the Texas star, add a half a foot, right? That would be, had to use the calculator. I may be wrong, but I came up with 212.5 feet, which is 170 divided by 2 which equals 85 and then divide 85 in half, which is 42.5 and add it to 170 and you get = 212.5 this is because if the kid is two and a half feet tall, that means for each 2 feet of the ferris wheel, add a half a foot to get the proportion. I googled for the height of the Texas Star and I got that it is 65 meters tall, which converts to 213.254593 feet, which is really close to my figure, but not exact.

oneguyinohio
Nov 19, 2007, 08:31 PM
The easy way to do the problem is to figure out that the child's shadow is 4/5ths of the kid's height. So then if you take 170 and divide by the proportion of 4/5ths, then you end up with 170 times 5, then divide that by 4. Remember when you divide by a fraction you have to multiply by the denominator and then divide that by the numerator... the answer comes out to 212.5 feet

The proportion is 4 units of shadow for every 5 units of height. In this case the unit would be half a foot. You would get the same answer if you decided to convert it to inches or whatever...