Question

Vesna Vulovic survived the longest fall on record without a parachute when her plane exploded and she fell 5 miles, 733 yards. What is this distance in meters?

Answer 1

Answer:

8717 meters.

Explanation:

We need to know the conversion factors. We know that:

1 mile = 1609.34 meters

1 yard = 0.9144 meters

This means that:

$\frac{1609.34 meters}{1 mile}=1$

$\frac{0.9144 meters}{1 yard}=1$

It is convenient to leave the units we want at the end in the numerator so the ones in the denominator cancel out with the ones we want to remove, as will be seen in the next step.

We will convert first the miles, then the yards, and add them up.

$5miles=5miles\frac{1609.34 meters}{1 mile}=8046.7meters$

$733yards=733yards\frac{0.9144 meters}{1 yard}=670.2552meters$

So total distance is the sum of these,  8717 meters.