sat suite question viewer

Geometry and Trigonometry Difficulty: Hard

Triangles $A B C$ and $D E F$ are similar. Each side length of triangle $A B C$ is $4$ times the corresponding side length of triangle $D E F$ . The area of triangle $A B C$ is $270$ square inches. What is the area, in square inches, of triangle $D E F$ ?

Back question 150 of 268 Next

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268

Explanation

The correct answer is $StartFraction 135 Over 8 EndFraction$ . It's given that triangles $A B C$ and $D E F$ are similar and each side length of triangle $A B C$ is $4$ times the corresponding side length of triangle $D E F$ . For two similar triangles, if each side length of the first triangle is $k$ times the corresponding side length of the second triangle, then the area of the first triangle is $k^{2}$ times the area of the second triangle. Therefore, the area of triangle $A B C$ is $4 squared$ , or $16$ , times the area of triangle $D E F$ . It's given that the area of triangle $A B C$ is $270$ square inches. Let $a$ represent the area, in square inches, of triangle $D E F$ . It follows that $270$ is $16$ times $a$ , or $270 equals 16 a$ . Dividing both sides of this equation by $16$ yields $\frac{270}{16} = a$ , which is equivalent to $\frac{135}{8} = a$ . Thus, the area, in square inches, of triangle $D E F$ is $StartFraction 135 Over 8 EndFraction$ . Note that 135/8, 16.87, and 16.88 are examples of ways to enter a correct answer.