Find the population density of each state.

Question

Part A: Find the population of each state. Round to the nearest tenth.


State Population est. Area
California 36,500,000 163,707
Florida 18,300,000 65,758
Iowa 2,990,000 56,276
New Jersey 8,690,000 8,722
Wyoming 522,000 97,818

Part B: Connecticut has about the same population as Iowa, but its area is 4,875 square miles. Without calculating, compare Connecticut's population density to Iowa. Justify your answer.

Answer 1

To answer part A:

Population density means the number of people in each square mile. Square miles is just a measure of how big a state is. For example a state with 20 square miles is bigger than a state with only 10 square miles.

 

 

 

Here's a simple example of finding population density:

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Pretend we have a state called Awesomeland.

 

Awesomeland is 1 square mile in size and only 10 people live in Awesomeland.

 

So we can see that for each square mile in Awesomeland there are 10 people, since all 10 people have to live in the 1 square mile within Awesomeland. In other words the population density is 10 people per square mile.

 

What happens if Awesomeland suddenly grows to have 2 square miles, but there are still only 10 people in Awesomeland. Well, now 5 people could live in 1 square and the other 5 people could live in the other square. This means we have 5 people per square mile. In other words the population density is 5 people per square mile.

 

So you can see that we are taking the number of people and dividing them among the square miles in our state.

 

We can say this as population density equals the number of people divided by the number of square miles.

 

So to solve part A you can take the number of people in each state and divide that by the number of square miles in the state.

 

To answer part B:

You said that Connecticut and Iowa both have the same number of people. Iowa has 56,276 square miles and Connecticut only has 4,875. So there are fewer square miles in Connecticut.

This means that the same number of people have to fit inside Connecticut and Iowa, but Connecticut is smaller in size. Based on the discussion about part A, do you think Connecticut will have a higher or lower population density than Iowa?