Question

Rosie is building two dog houses, one for each of her dogs. One dog is bigger than the other, so she decides to make one house 1/2 the size of the other. How much smaller will the surface area of the small house be compared to that of the big house? Write your response as a fraction. The surface area of the small house will be _ the size of the big house.

Answer 1

If the linear dimensions are half as large, surface area scales by (1/2)^2 = 1/4.

So the surface area of the small house will be 1/4 the size of the big house.