A local food organization puts out a healthy foods poster. The poster is in the shape of a rectangle, and its dimensions are given in the table. Alfredo wants to make a smaller version of the poster to hang up in the community center. He makes a scale drawing of the poster with the length of the top edge given in the table. What is the area of Alfredo’s scale drawing? Original Poster Scale Drawing

left edge (in.) 36 ?
top edge (in.) 24 8

1 answer

To find the area of Alfredo's scale drawing, we first need to determine the dimensions of the smaller version of the poster based on the given dimensions of the original poster.

The original poster dimensions are:

  • Left edge: 36 inches
  • Top edge: 24 inches

Alfredo's scale drawing has the following dimensions:

  • Top edge: 8 inches (given)

Now we need to find the scale factor used in Alfredo's drawing. We can find the scale factor by comparing the top edges of the original poster and the scale drawing:

\[ \text{Scale Factor} = \frac{\text{Top edge of scale drawing}}{\text{Top edge of original poster}} = \frac{8}{24} = \frac{1}{3} \]

Now, we apply this scale factor to find the left edge of Alfredo's scale drawing:

\[ \text{Left edge of scale drawing} = \text{Left edge of original poster} \times \text{Scale Factor} = 36 \times \frac{1}{3} = 12 \text{ inches} \]

Now that we have both dimensions of the scale drawing:

  • Left edge: 12 inches
  • Top edge: 8 inches

We can now calculate the area of Alfredo's scale drawing:

\[ \text{Area} = \text{Left edge} \times \text{Top edge} = 12 \times 8 = 96 \text{ square inches} \]

Thus, the area of Alfredo’s scale drawing is 96 square inches.