Ok, have you ever heard of the pythagorean theorum? So you start with drawing a right triangle, this triangle represents the tree’s shadow… The one side you know is 42′ which is the height of the tree. You would draw a line, perpendicular to(straight up from) the bottom line… The bottom line represents the length of the entire tree’s shadow on the ground. The perpendicular line should be almost at the far corner, and that would represent the height of Linda. Mark this as 5.5′. You also know that Linda’s shadow is 8′ so you can mark the segment of the bottom section between the perpendicular line and the far corner (end of shadow). If you use proportions you can use the dimensions of the smaller triangle (created “inside” the other triangle) and substitute to find the larger triangle. So the dimensions of the small triangle are 5.5 on one side, and 8 on the other. The hypotenuse is found using the pythagorean theorum. 5.5^2 + 8^2 = length of hypotenuse^2 [9.71] So if one side of the large triangle is 42 and the same side of the small triangle is 5.5 then the proportion is 7.6363. So you can multiply the dimensions of the small triangle by 7.6363 and figure out the dimensions of the large triangle. So, since you need to figure out the bottom side you would take 8*7.6363 = 61.09. Since you want to know how far away she was from the tree you’d have to subtract the shadow of Linda so you’d end up with a final answer of 53.09′. That is how far away Linda was from the tree.

Make sure you draw it out and recheck the math. Its really easy if you draw if and turn a word problem into a visual diagram.

i’ll take a chance on this one

linda is 5.5 tall .. tree is 42 ..

42/5.5 = 7.636 ( tree is 7.636 times as tall as linda )

linda’s shadow is 8

8×7.636 = 61 ( length of tree’s shadow, since we now know that it must be 7.636 times as long as linda’s shadow )

( funny i could do this useing algabra and not geometry )

61-8= 53.. distance linda is from tree