Question

Marie has a small copy of Rene Magritte's famous painting The Schoolmaster. Her copy has dimensions 2 inches by 1.5 inch The scale of the copy is 1 in 40 cm. How do you find the dimensions of the original painting?

Answer 1

The original painting is:
`203.2 cm` x `152.4cm`
or
`2.032 m` x `1.524m`

Explanation:

First we need to convert all units to the same system. 1 inch is equal to `2.54 cm`, so we multiply each inch by `2.54` to get the measurements of Marie's copy in centimeters.

`2*2.54=5.08 cm`
`1.5*2.54=3.81cm`

Now when it says that the scale is 1 in 40cm (1:40) it means that each centimeter in the copy represents 40 in the original. So we multiply our results by 40 to get the original size.

`5.08 *40 = 203.2 cm`
`3.81*40=152.4cm`