Practical Math Applications

The students of East Forest Integrated Math class have recently demonstrated how to determine the height of an object while only using measurements that can be taken on the ground. The students discovered that if they related the length of their own shadow to the length of the shadow of the desired object in the form of a ratio, then the height of the student to the height of the object would be proportional to the lengths of the shadows.

The East Forest Students discovered it would look something like this:

Length of Students Shadow		Height of Student
	=
Length of Flagpole’s Shadow		Height of Flagpole

During this experiment, a 5 ft. Student cast a 17 ft long, while the flagpole cast a shadow of 87 ft. Using the proportion from above the students work looked like this:

17		5
	=
87		Height of Flagpole

The students then cross multiplied; (17) x (Height of Flagpole) = (87)x(5), and then divided both sides by 17 to get the height of the flagpole. 435 Ö17 = 25.58 ft or roughly 25 and a half feet high