You want to produce a scale drawing of your living room, which is 24 ft by 15 ft. If you use a scale of 4 in=6 ft, what will be the dimensions of your scale drawing.
I think the dimensions are 16 ft by 10 ft. Is this right?
is the answer 16 in by 10 in?
No. Can you explain what you did to get that?
I tried to make a proportion 4/6=x/24 and that's how I got 16. Then I got another proprtion 4/6=x/15 and I got 10. What did I do wrong?
If you just think about how realistic your answer is, a drawing of those dimensions would be much too difficult to handle. That's a good way to know you've done something wrong.
Start by finding the scale for 1 foot. That should put you in the right direction.
You may have used the scale 4 FEET = 6 feet when you should have done 4 INCHES = 6 feet. That's probably what you did wrong.
Does 1 ft equals 1.5 in?
is the answer 4 ft by 2.5 ft?
To get the conversion factor for every foot, convert feet to inches.
4 in = 6 ft
4 in = 72 in
(divide by 4)
1 in = 18 in
For every 18 inches (1.5 ft), your scale will be only 1 inch. You must have done this backwards.
Try your multiplication again to get the final answer.
what do you have to multiply?
You're not actually multiplying. Sorry.
24 ft by 15 ft
Divide each by 1.5 so that it fits our conversion factor (1.5 ft = 1 in).
24/1.5 = 16 inches
Do the same thing with 15.