Chaz draws a square with sides equal to 4 units, then he dilates the square so the sides are equal to 6 units. Chaz writes a fraction in lowest terms to express the relationship between the area of the original square and the dilated square, with the numerator expressing the area of the dilated square. What is that fraction?

A. 16/36
B. 2 and 1/4
C. 4/9
D. 2/3

1 answer

To express the relationship between the area of the original square and the dilated square, we first need to calculate the areas of both squares.

  1. Area of the original square: The side length is 4 units, so we calculate the area: \[ \text{Area}_{\text{original}} = \text{side}^2 = 4^2 = 16 \text{ square units} \]

  2. Area of the dilated square: The side length of the dilated square is 6 units, so we calculate this area: \[ \text{Area}_{\text{dilated}} = 6^2 = 36 \text{ square units} \]

  3. Creating the fraction representing the relationship: We want the fraction to have the area of the dilated square as the numerator and the area of the original square as the denominator: \[ \text{Fraction} = \frac{\text{Area}{\text{dilated}}}{\text{Area}{\text{original}}} = \frac{36}{16} \]

  4. Simplifying the fraction: To simplify \(\frac{36}{16}\), we can divide both the numerator and denominator by their greatest common divisor (GCD), which is 4: \[ \frac{36 \div 4}{16 \div 4} = \frac{9}{4} \]

So the fraction that expresses the relationship is \(\frac{9}{4}\).

Since it looks like the answer choices do not include \(\frac{9}{4}\), let’s evaluate them.

A. \( \frac{16}{36} = \frac{4}{9} \)
B. \( 2 \frac{1}{4} = \frac{9}{4} \)
C. \( \frac{4}{9} \)
D. \( \frac{2}{3} \)

The proper relationship in simplest terms is indeed \( \frac{9}{4} \), and that corresponds with option B when considering the fraction representation.

Therefore, the final answer is: \[ \boxed{2 \frac{1}{4}} \]