Question

Dixon and his little sister Ariadne stand next to each other on the playground on a sunny afternoon. Their mother measures their shadows. Ariadne’s shadow is 15 feet long and Dixon’s shadow is 18 feet long. If Ariadne is 5 feet tall , how tall is Dixon ?

Answer 1

Hey there! I'm happy to help you!

To solve this, we can set up a proportion below! I will put the data in table, fraction, and ratio form so you can see different ways to visualize it.

                       HEIGHT         LENGTH OF SHADOW

DIXON               ?                              18

ARIADNE           5                              15

 

                     or

$\frac{height}{length} =\frac{5}{15} =\frac{h}{18}$

                     or

5:15= h:18

As we can see, we see that Ariadne's length of shadow is three times as large as her height. Therefore, that means that Dixon's height will be 1/3 of the length of his shadow!

18/3= 6

We can also use the cross multiplying method with our proportion and then solve for h!

h=5*18/15

h=90/15

h=6

Therefore, Dixon is six feet tall.

I hope that this helps! Have a great day!