after 3/4 of a minute a sloth has moved 3/8 of a foot. what is the sloth's speed in feet per minute?

Question

 i need to figure out how much it's speed is in feet per minute

 

Answer 1

What Dominic says is true. Another way to view it is like this:

 

The sloth moves 3/8 of a foot in 3/4 of a minute. Let's take it backwards a little bit. This means that the sloth moved 2/8 of a foot in 2/4 of a minute (also known as 1/2), and moves 1/8 of a foot in 1/4 of a minute. This trend shows that the sloth moves 1/8 of a foot in 1/4 (one quarter, or every 15 seconds) of a minute. So, if you had 1/8+1/8+1/8+1/8 (that is 1/8 for ever quarter of a minute) you will get 4/8, or 1/2. 

Answer 2

Speed is calculated as distance divided by time.  Here our distance is 3/8 feet, and our time is 3/4 minutes.  So we have:

 

(3/8)/(3/4)

 

Division by fractions is equivalent to multiplication by the inverse of the fraction

 

(3/8)*(4/3) = (3*4)/(3*8) = 4/8 = 1/2 feet per minute.