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?

1 Answer
May 27, 2017

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#