Question

If the original rectangle has an area of 2 cm squared and the scaled copied has an area of 50 cm squared what is the scale factor used to draw the scaled copy

Answer 1

Answer:

The scale factor used to draw the scaled copy is a factor of 5

Step-by-step explanation:

Here, we are interested in calculating the scale factor which was used to transition the original rectangle to the new scaled copy.

Firstly, there is a way to relate how the scale factor of the sides relate to the scale factor of the area. What we are saying here is that the scale factor of the sides is never equal to that of the area;

For a 2 cm^2 area let’s say the sides are 1 by 2 ; this gives us an area as said

Now, to get 50cm^2, we can see that the scale factor of both areas is 25 (2 to 50)

So the area has been scaled 25 times the original area. So how has the sides been scaled?

Using a general principle, the scale used to scale the area is the square of the scale used to scale the sides. What are we saying here? if the area is scaled by 4, then the sides are scaled by 2

So in this particular case, the area is scaled by a factor of 25

Now, the scale factor of the sides will be the positive square root of this which is 5

Hence, we can conclude that the sides of the smaller triangles were each multiplied by 5 to arrive at the sides of the bigger one which makes it that the scale factor used to draw the scaled copy is 5