A snowstorm took place during the weekend. Meteorologists tracked the total amount of snowfall for the storm. For the first 2 hours, it snowed at a rate of 1 inch per hour. The snow stopped for an hour and a half, then resumed at a rate of 1.5 inches per hour for the next 3 hours. Based on this information, what scale would work best for representing the data on the x-axis?
• 5
• 2
• 0.5
• 3
The best scale to represent the data on the x-axis would be 0.5.
This is because the snowfall was tracked for a period of 2 hours at a rate of 1 inch per hour, which means a total of 2 inches of snowfall. After that, there was a break for 1.5 hours, so the x-axis should represent this break somehow.
Then, the snowfall resumed for 3 hours at a rate of 1.5 inches per hour, which means a total of 4.5 inches of additional snowfall.
Hence, the scale on the x-axis should be able to represent 1.5 hours of break and 3 hours of snowfall, which is best achieved by using a scale of 0.5.