The abc toy company is creating two similar pieces for a board game, as shown below. find the value of b that makes the two pieces similar. triangle rst is shown with sides rs marked as 5, rt marked as 8, and st marked as a. triangle xyz is shown with sides xy marked as b, xz marked as 16, and yz marked as c. what is the value b?

there's a couple of different ways you can set up the proportions you need to solve this. you could go from triangle to triangle, or you could go corresponding sides to corresponding sides. i will set up corresponding sides to corresponding sides first, then we can do it from triangle to triangle to show they are the same. from corresponding side to corresponding side the proportion looks like this: . cross multiply to get 8b = 80 and b = 10. the other way to set up the proportions would look like this: . again, cross multiply to get 8b = 80 and b = 10. see the difference?