How high is a tree that casts a 48 ft shadow at the same time a 12 ft pole casts a shadow which is 12 ft long?

Answer 1

For every 12 feet of height an object has, its shadow will be 12 feet long. So 12/12 would be my ratio.

Well next I know the shadow of that tree is 48 feet long, but I don’t know the height.

Well, it turns out that my tree and my pole aren’t all that different. They’re both casting a shadow from the same sun, at the same time. So the height of my objects would be in proportion to their shadow.

Now since I don’t know the height at the present moment, I’ll just make this ratio (of the tree) be represented as x/48. Which is saying that for every ‘x’ amount of feet, there will be 48 feet of shadow.

so we have: 12/12=x/48. which says that x= 48.