the ratio of boys to girls in an art class is 3.5. there are 12 boys in the class. how many girls are in the class?
Cross multiply and solve for x.
3/5 = 12/x
To find out how many girls are in the art class, we need to use the given information that the ratio of boys to girls is 3.5 and there are 12 boys in the class.
First, we need to calculate the total number of students in the class. Since the ratio of boys to girls is 3.5, this means that for every 3.5 boys, there is 1 girl.
To convert the ratio to a whole number, we can multiply both sides of the ratio by 2. This gives us a ratio of 7 boys to 2 girls. So, for every 7 boys, there are 2 girls in the class.
Since we know that there are 12 boys in the class, we can divide 12 by 7 to find out how many sets of 7 boys are in the class. 12 divided by 7 is approximately 1.71.
Since we can't have a fraction of a student, we round down to the nearest whole number. So there is 1 set of 7 boys in the class.
Now we know there is 1 set of 7 boys in the class, which means there are 2 girls in the class for each set. Since one set has 7 boys, there are 2 girls in that set.
So, the number of girls in the class is 1 set of 2, which equals 2 girls.
Therefore, there are 2 girls in the art class.