You can
put this solution on YOUR website!The problem tells you that each 1/4 inch on the drawing equals 12 inches in "real world"
dimensions. And since 12 inches is 1 foot, you can say that each 1/4 inch on the drawing
represents 1 foot in actual size.
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In the explanations below, you will see 3 3/8 written as 3+3/8 in some places. These are
equivalent ways of writing the mixed number.
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If you measure 3 3/8 inches on the drawing, how many 1/4 inches is that? Since each inch
contains 4 quarter inches, the three inches is 4*3 or 12 quarter inches. You still have the
3/8 inches, and 3/8 of an inch contains one 1/4 plus half of another or 1.5 quarters.
So the total number of 1/4 inches is 12 + 1.5 = 13.5 quarters and since each of those
quarters represents a foot, the total number of feet is 13.5 feet.
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If this explanation is a little confusing, there are a couple of other ways you can look
at it. You can find the number of quarters in 3 3/8 by dividing 3 3/8 by 1/4. Convert
the 3 3/8 to an improper fraction by multiply 8 times the whole number 3 and adding
the additional 3 from the numerator to get 3 3/8 = (24+3)/8 = 27/8. To divide this by
1/4, invert the 1/4 to get 4/1 and multiply that by the 27/8. The result is:
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(27*4)/(8*1) = 118/8 = 13 4/8 = 13 1/2. This again tells you that the drawing measurement
of 3 3/8 contains 13 1/2 quarter inches and since each quarter inch represents 1 foot,
the drawing dimension represents 13 1/2 feet.
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Or you could set up the proportion of one-quarter inch is to 1 foot as 3 3/8 inches
is to X feet which translates to the equation:
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Solve this equation by cross multiplying ... multiplying the numerator of the left side
times the denominator of the right side and setting that product equal to the numerator
of the right side times the denominator of the left side. When you do that you get:
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If you multiply both sides of this equation by 4 to eliminate the denominator on the left
side, you get:
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The distributed multiplication on the right side leads to:
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Again the answer is 13 1/2 feet.
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Hope one or more of these methods makes sense to you.
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