Question

The surface areas of two similar rectangular prisms are 361m^2 and 441m^2. What is the scale factor of the larger prism to the smaller prism?

Answer 1

Hi, and welcome to QuestionCove!
So, first, the scale ratios of the Surface Area of the two similar shapes can be found by dividing the Surface Area of the larger prism with the Surface Area of the smaller prism.
Once we get the ratio of the Surface Areas, we simply take the square root of that value to find the ratio between the two shapes. The reason for this is that Surface Area is given in units of meters squared, but in comparing the ratios of two shapes, we are interested in the ratio between the edges of the shapes, which is measured in meters.