A diagram measuring 20 cm long is reduced on a copy machine to 15 cm long. If the width of the original copy is 16 cm, what is the width of the reduced copy? Show your work.
15/20 = 3/4
(3/4) * 16 = ?
Yes, 12 is right.
What don't you understand about my previous answer?
http://www.jiskha.com/display.cgi?id=1456184541
I got 48/64, which doesn't make sense. If the original copy is 16 cm, wouldn't the reduced copy be smaller?
Oh wait, I see what I did wrong. So would it be 12 then?
To find the width of the reduced copy, we need to determine the scale factor of the reduction. The scale factor is the ratio of the lengths of the original diagram to the reduced diagram.
The length of the original diagram is 20 cm, and the length of the reduced diagram is 15 cm. To find the scale factor, we divide the length of the original diagram by the length of the reduced diagram:
Scale factor = Length of original diagram / Length of reduced diagram
= 20 cm / 15 cm
Simplifying the ratio, we get:
Scale factor = 4/3
Now, we can use this scale factor to find the width of the reduced copy. The width of the original copy is given as 16 cm. To find the width of the reduced copy, we multiply the width of the original copy by the scale factor:
Width of reduced copy = Width of original copy * Scale factor
= 16 cm * (4/3)
Calculating the result, we have:
Width of reduced copy = 64/3 cm
So, the width of the reduced copy is approximately 21.3 cm (rounded to one decimal place).
If you are using a calculator, you can directly input 16 x (4/3) to get the answer.