To calculate that, you'd need to know the angle of the light source or the time of day or have some other object to compare it to.
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The flag pole would be 20 feet. (You can see that the shadows are twice as long.) At a given time of the day, the length of a shadow cast by any object will have the same relationship to its actual height as all other objects. Here the ratio is 5/10 = x/40 and multiplying both sides by 40, 20 = x.
Shadow lengths are proportional to the heights of objects casting the shadows. Therefore, calling the shadow length l, the height h, and the proportionality constant k, l = kh. (The intercept is 0 because an object with no height casts no shadow.) Therefore, in this instance k = l/h = 6/3 or 8/4 = 2. then l(6) = 2 X 6 = 12 feet.
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To solve this problem, we can set up a proportion using the similar triangles formed by the flagpole and its shadow, and the mailbox and its shadow. The height of the flagpole to its shadow is 30 feet to 12 feet, which simplifies to 5:2. Using this ratio, we can determine the height of the mailbox by setting up the proportion 5/2 = x/1.5 (converting 18 inches to feet). Solving for x, the height of the mailbox would be 3.75 feet.
27.3 feet