Question

Pat is painting a stage backdrop for a play. The paint he is using covers 90 square feet per quart. How many quarts of paint should Pat buy?
Part a) Find the total area of backdrop. Explain how you found this.

part b) Explain how to determine how many quarts of paint Pat should buy.

Answer 1

A) If you cut off half the peaks (3.5 ft down from the top), they will just fill the valleys making a rectangle 18.5 ft by 30 ft. The area is the product of these dimensions.
  A = (18.5 ft)*(30 ft) = 555 ft²

b) To determine the number of quarts of paint required, divide this number by 90 ft². Since you cannot buy a partial quart, if there is any remainder, use the next higher integer number of quarts.
  555/90 ≈ 6.2 so Pat should buy 7 quarts of paint.