The flower bed is 12 feet long and 4 feet wide. If she wants to put 12 inches of mulch in the bed, how many cubic feet of mulch will she need?

Question

The flower bed has a length of 12 feet and a width of 4 feet.

Answer 1

When you see something about "cubic" feet, then something should click that you're looking at a volume question. So based on the numbers you're listing in the problem, it sounds like a box-shaped flower bed right? Well, to find the volume of a box/rectangle, you use the formula:

 

Volume = length x width x height = l x w x h

 

The flower bed is 12 ft long and 4 ft wide, so let's have l = 12 ft and w = 4 ft. But... what's h? Remember that whoever this girl is wants to put 12 inches of mulch in there, which sounds like a height right? So let's have h = 12 in. We can start plugging and chugging, but notice that the length and width are in feet, but the height is in inches, so let's change it to make everything the same! A foot is the same as 12 in, so we'll let h = 1 ft.

 

Let's plug in, shall we?

 

Volume = l x w x h = (12 ft) x (4 ft) x (1 ft) = 48 cubic feet (it's called "cubic" b/c there's 3 of them, so if you end up missing some "feet" check your math to avoid getting nickel and dime'd for miscalculations.)

 

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

12 feet long x 4 feet wide x 1 foot deep of mulch= 48 cubic feet of mulch