Question

Roberto needs some roofing tiles to be cut from a large tile. How many tiles that are each 14 3/8 inches in length can he cut from a larger piece of tile that is 100 3/8 inches long?

Answer 1

Answer:

6 tiles.    

Step-by-step explanation:

We have been given that Roberto needs some roofing tiles to be cut from a large tile.

Let us find the number of tiles that can be cut from a larger piece of tile.

$\text{Tiles can be cut from large piece}=\frac{\text{length of large tile}}{\text{length of each small tile}}$  

Let us convert our given mixed fractions in improper fractions.

$14\frac{3}{8}=\frac{115}{8}$

$100\frac{3}{8}=\frac{803}{8}$

Now let us substitute our given values in above formula.

$\text{Tiles can be cut from large piece}=\frac{803}{8}\div\frac{115}{8}$

Since we know that dividing a fraction by a fraction is same as multiplying the reciprocal of second fraction with the first fraction.

$\text{Tiles can be cut from large piece}=\frac{803}{8}\times\frac{8}{115}$

Upon cancelling out 8 from numerator and denominator we will get,

$\text{Tiles can be cut from large piece}=\frac{803}{115}$      

$\text{Tiles can be cut from large piece}=6.9826086956521739$  

We can see that number of tiles turns out to be 6.98, although it is very close to 7, but we cannot round our answer because the 7th tile will still be shorter than the required measure. Therefore, we can only cut 6 tiles of the required size from the given large tile.