I need some serious help!

Question

how do i figure out how to solve this?  Joe is buying new sod for his front yard. it measures 25 yards long and 114 feet wide. if the sod costs $2.25 per square foot, then how much will the sod cost to the nearest cent?

Answer 1

Since you know the cost of sod per square foot, you just need to figure out the area of the yard in square feet.  Then you can multiply the cost per square foot by the number of square feet to get the total cost.

 

You have the dimensions of the yard, and the way you describe it, it sounds like it is a rectangle.  So that makes it easy to find the total area, since the area of a rectangle is just the length times the width.

 

BUT...  One of the dimensions you have is in yards and one is in feet.  In order to calculate the area, they both have to be in the same units.  Since the cost per sod is given per square foot, you're better off converting the yards to feet, so you can then calculate the area in square feet.

 

So the length is 25 yards.  Since there are 3 yards in a foot, that means that the length is 3 x 25 = 75 square feet.

 

Now multiply 75 feet by 114 feet to get the area.  That's 8550 square feet.

 

Now multiply the area by the cost per square foot.  That's 8550 x $2.25 = $19237.50.

 

So the cost of the sod will be $19237.50.