Question

a telephone pole has a shadow of 8ft. When a person 2.5ft tall has a shadow of 3ft. How tall is the pole?

Answer 1

have you any experience with the tangent function?

Answer 2

don;t need tangent, set up proportion
2.5/3 = x/8
solve for x

Answer 3

ugh. good point. sorry.

Answer 4

i mean you are right, you could use tangent but you would end up with same proportion
and if they havn't learned trig yet then think of it as similar triangles

Answer 5

definitely makes sense.