Now this next question I unfortunately don't get at all:
~Chow Li is planting a border of 48 seedlings that will completely surround a rectangular garden plot. He wants to plant the seedlings 2 feet apart. If the garden plot is to be 30 feet long, how wide should it be?~
Can you please steer me in the right direction? I really just don't know where to start. I've tried a little bit of multiplication but I think I'm going the wrong way...
Since the seedlings are 2 feet apart, he needs a total of 96 feet for the seedlings. The combined length of the two sides is 60 feet. That leaves the other two sides to total 36 feet long. Each side is 18 feet long.
The garden is 30 feet long and 18 feet wide.
Oh ok, so 2*48=96, and 96-30= 36, divided by 2 is 18. Got it, thanks so much.
Yay!! And you're very welcome. :-)
To solve this problem, we can start by visualizing the situation.
Since Chow Li wants to plant a border of seedlings completely around the rectangular garden plot, we can imagine that he is placing seedlings along the perimeter of the plot. Each side of the plot will have the same number of seedlings planted.
We are given that Chow Li wants to plant the seedlings 2 feet apart. This means that between any two neighboring seedlings, there will be a gap of 2 feet.
The length of the garden plot is given as 30 feet. Let's assume that the width of the garden plot is "w" feet.
Now, we need to calculate the total length of the sides of the plot, excluding the corners, where seedlings won't be planted.
The two sides of length 30 feet each are already known, so we can calculate the total length of these sides as: 2 * 30 = 60 feet.
Since there will be seedlings planted along the entire perimeter of the plot, we can calculate the total number of gaps between seedlings using the formula: total length of sides / gap between seedlings.
In this case, the total length of sides is 60 feet and the gap between seedlings is 2 feet.
So, the total number of gaps between seedlings would be: 60 / 2 = 30 gaps.
Now, let's consider the width of the plot again. The width will have the same number of seedlings planted as the length. Since there are 30 gaps between seedlings, this means there will be 31 seedlings along the width (including both ends).
Therefore, we can calculate the width of the plot by multiplying the gap between seedlings (2 feet) by the 30 gaps and then adding two additional seedlings for the ends.
So, the width of the plot would be: 2 * 30 + 2 = 62 feet.
Therefore, the width of the plot should be 62 feet for Chow Li to plant a border of 48 seedlings that will completely surround the rectangular garden plot.