An artist wants to reduce the size of a drawing using a scale factor of 3:1. The original drawing has an area of 720 square inches.

What is area of the new drawing?

To find the new area after applying a scale factor of 3:1, you will need to understand the the area is a 2 dimensional measurement. Scale factors are applied to each dimension, so to determine the new area using this scale factor you will multiply the original area of 720 square inches x 3 and then x 3 again.

720 x 3 x 3 = 6480 square inches.

To understand how this works, see this example:

3 x 4 = 12 square units

(3 x 3) 9 x (4 x 3) 12 = 108 square units

12 x 3 x 3 = 108 square units

We tripled each dimension.