Question

Tampa is building a fence in the shape of a right angle. The length of the base of the fence is 12 feet, and the length of one aide is 5 feet. Tampa makes a scale drawing of the garden using a scale of 1 inch to 2 feet. What is the area of the garden in the scale drawing?

Answer 1

We will begin by converting the lengths of the fence from feet to inches in the scale drawing.

We are given that 1 inch represents 2 feet in the fence. This means that:

$\begin{gathered} \text{If 1 inch represents 2 feet} \\ h=5ft\Rightarrow\frac{5}{2}in \\ b=12ft\Rightarrow6in \end{gathered}$

The formula to calculate the area of a triangle is given to be:

$A=\frac{1}{2}bh$

Therefore, the area of the garden in the scale drawing will be:

$A=\frac{1}{2}\times6\times\frac{5}{2}=7.5in^2$

The area is 7.5 square inches.