El generico public high school got a new flagpole. but they completely forgot to buy a cord and no one knows how tall the flagpole is! to find out, they decided to use similar figures! as the sun was setting, bob the janitor set up a 5-foot stick next to the flagpole and compared shadows. the 5-foot stick cast an 8-foot shadow. the shadow of the flagpole was 32-feet long.

what i would say the best answer is a. 40.5

step-by-step explanation:

the line y=x is the line where the x and y coordinates of each point, are equal.

so this line is the line through the origin (0, 0), which makes an angle of 45° with the x-axis.

we draw triangle abc. to reflect this triangle with respect to the line y=x, we draw perpendiculars from the points a, b and c to to line y=x, and extend the perpendiculars so that the lint y=x is a perpendicular bisector of these line segments. 

we see that a(5, 3) is mapped to a'(3, 5)

and all the other points p(a, b) of the original triangle are mapped to p'(b,a)

the last statement is true for each point x and its reflection x', also it is true that the line y=x is the perpendicular bisector of xx' and yy'.

to prove these, check the second picture.

let the coordinates of x be (a, b), we want to find the coordinates of its reflection point with respect to the line y=x, point x'.

let m be the point on the line y=x, such that xm=mx'

let n be the point (b, b) which surely is on the line.

now, x'm=mx, nm is common and m(x'mn)=m(xmn)=90°, so by side-angle-side congruence postulate, the triangles x'mn and xmn

  are congruent, so nx=nx'

clearly the x coordinate of x' is b, so the y coordinate of x' is 

b+nx'=b+nx=a

so the coordinates of x' are (b, a)

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