How do you solve indirect measurement problems?

Answer 1

Okay, so you have two objects, a flag pole and a person. The flag pole's shadow is 20 ft and you don't know what the height is. The person is 5 ft tall and cast a shadow of 10ft. You then set up a proportion, the poles height (which is x for now) over the persons height and put the flags shadow over the persons shadow. This should look like this:

x = 20ft By the way, there should be lines but I can't do it on this... Sorry!

5ft 10ft Anyway, you cross multiply and should get 100=10x. Then, divide both sides by 10 since you need to isolate x and you get 10=x or x=10 which means that the height of the flag pole is 10ft. You can basically figure out some-thing's height by the shadow and the comparison to another object. (Or vice. verse)