The sails on two model ships are similar right triangles. What is the height, x, of the smaller sail in inches?

1.5 in.

4.6 in.

10.5 in.

13.7 in.

there are lots of ways.   pick's theorem tells us if the vertices are lattice points the area a is

a = b/2 + i - 1

where b is the number of boundary lattice points and i is the number of interior lattice points.

in the figure i count b=16, i=50 so

a = 8 + 50 - 1 = 57

let's try the shoelace formula.   the area is half the sum of the cross products of the sides.  

a(-2,6)   -2(2)-6(-5) = 26

b(-5,2)   -5(-3) - 2(-2) = 19

c(-2,-3) -2(-3) - (-3)(4) = 18

d(4,-3)   4(3) - (-3)(5) = 27

e(5,3)   5(3) - 3(1) = 12

f(1,3)     1(6) - 3(-2) = 12

a(-2,6)

each of the cross products is twice the area of the triangle with the associated side and one vertex the origin. so the area of abo=26/2=13.

area = (1/2) (26 + 19 +   18 + 27 + 12 + 12) = 57

that checks!

the image is given below

since the options are not given so we draw it from the equation

the given equation is

y = (x-1) (x+4)

y = y² + 3x - 4

the above equation is a quadratic equation which will have two roots. if we draw the graph for it, it will look like this