Question

The titanic was 882 feet 9 inches long. You can build a model of the ship that is 2nfeet 6 inches long and 6 inches high. What was the approximate height of the titanic to the nearest inch

Answer 1

So the actual titanic was 882 feet and 9 inches long, and the model is 2 feet and 6 inches.

1.) Convert both the model and the real titanic to inches.
882 feet = 10584 inches (multiply 12) plus another 9 inches is 10593 inches

And for the model,
2 feet is 24 inches plus another 6 inches is 30 inches.

2.) Find the scale factor compared to the model and the actual thing.
The actual thing is 10,593 and the model is 30 inches. Divide 10593 by 30 to find the scale factor. You should get 353.1

3.) Multiply the scale factor to the height.
Since we have the model height and the scale factor, to find the actual height we can just multiply the model height times the scale factor.

6 inches x 353.1 = 2118.6 inches
That means the titanic's actual height is 2118.6 inches

4.) Round to the nearest inch.
Because the instructions say round to the nearest inch, we must round 2118.6 to the nearest inch.
You should get 2119 (because the 6 in the tenths place is greater than 4)

Our final answer is 2119 inches. :)