Question

Giovanni went to Los Angeles, California, for the summer to visit his cousins. He used a map of bus routes to get from the airport to his cousin's house. The distance from the airport to his cousin's house is 56km. On his map, the distance is 4 cm. what is the scale factor?

Answer 1

Answer: $scale\ factor=\frac{1}{1,400,000}$

Step-by-step explanation:

You know that the actual distance from the airport to his cousin's house is 56 kilometers and on the map this distance is 4 centimeters.

Then, you need to make the conversion from kilometers to centimeters (Remember that $1\ km=100,000\ cm$):

$(56\ km)(\frac{100,000\ cm}{1\ km})=5,600,000\ cm$

Therefore, you can apply this procedure in order to find the scale factor:

$scale\ factor=\frac{4\ cm}{5,600,000\ cm}\\\\scale\ factor=\frac{1}{1,400,000}$