Hello there! Thank you for asking your question here at Brainly. I will be assisting you today with answering this problem, and will be teaching you how to deal with it on your own in the future.
First, let's take a look at our question, and evaluate it.
"The area of a rectangular patio is 5 5/8 square yards, and it's length is 1 1/2 yards. What is the patio's width in yards?"
To clarify this problem, we are looking for the patio's width.
Let's first understand what the area of a rectangular shape is. The formula for the area of a rectangle is "Length times Width", or "L • W".
So this is how the equation should look like: A = L • W We have our area, 5 5/8, and we have our length, 1 1/2.
To make things more simple, let's convert our fractions to decimals. Now, to convert our fractions to decimals, let's set our denominators (the numbers on the bottom of a fraction) equal to another fraction, with x as the numerator (the numbers on the top of a fraction) and 100 as the denominator.
So we have 1/2 and x/100. Divide 100 by 2 to find x (as 1/2 of anything is dividing by 2). 100 / 2 = 50, so 1 1/2 = 1.50 as a decimal.
Now, let's try 5/8. 1/8 = 0.125, so multiply 0.125 by 5. 0.125 • 5 = 0.625. 5 5/8 = 5.625 as a decimal.
So, now we have our equation: A = L • W Plug in our numbers. 5.625 = 1.50x
To isolate and solve for x, we need to divide both sides by 1.50, so let's do that. 5.625 / 1.50 = 3.75 1.50x / 1.50 = x
