A scale of a model is the ratio between any length on the model and the corresponding length on actual object.
Item
Model
Actual
House
Height: 6 ft
Height: 30 ft
Garden hose
Length: 12 ft
Length: 20 yd
Fountain
Depth: 20 cm
Depth: 1 m
Practice makes perfect
We want to find the missing dimension using the scale of 1:5. We can recall that a scale of a model is the ratio between any length on the model and the corresponding length on actual object. Next, we can consider the given table.
Item
Model
Actual
House
Height: 6 ft
Height: 30 ft
Garden hose
Length: 12 ft
Length: 20 yd
Fountain
Depth: 20 cm
Depth: â–¡ m
First, we can write that the depth scale factor is equal to the ratio of the depth of the model fountain to the depth of the actual fountain.
Depth Scale Factor=Depth of the Model Fountain/Depth of the Actual Fountain
We want to determine the depth of the actual fountain in meters. In this case, we know that the model fountain has the length of 20 centimeters. We can start by converting 20 centimeters to meters using a conversion factor of 1 m100 cm.
The model fountain has the depth of 15 meter. Finally, we can substitute 1:5 for the scale factor and 15 meter for the length of the model fountain in our formula. We can also represent the depth of the actual fountain with an arbitrary variable d. Let's solve our formula for d!
Depth Scale Factor=Depth of the Model Fountain/Depth of the Actual Fountain
