Question

Lisa drew a picture of a boat. She used the scale 1 inch: 6.5 feet the boat in her picture is 7:25 inches long. What is the length, in feet of the actual boat?

Answer 1

You can write this as a proportion  1 inch is to 6.5 feet as 7.25 in is to X               1/6.5 = 7.25/X                     7.25 times 6.5 = X           X = 47.125 feet

Answer 2

Okay. So, using the scale, we can solve for the length of the actual boat by writing and solving a proportion. Let’s write it out like this: 1/6.5 = 7.5/x. This is because you’re looking for the real length of the boat, so the x would be lined up horizontally with 6.5, as shown in the proportion. Let’s cross multiply. 6.5 * 7.5 is 48.75. 1 * x is 1x. 48.75 = 1x. Now, let’s divide each side by 1 to isolate the “x”. When you do that, you get x = 48.75. There. The length of the actual boat is 48.75 feet.