Metric System

Question

Find the miles per second traveled if 90 miles in 3 hours. Round to 5 decimal places if necessary

Answer 1

Hi Kitty.

 

For these types of problems, we treat the units as if they were numbers.  If you have (12 inches)/(1 foot)  = 1 even though the units are different.  So we will start with 90 miles in 3 hours

 

 

90miles/3 hours.    

 

We want to keep the miles, but convert the hours to seconds.  So we will first multiply by 1 hour/60 min      This lets the "hours" cancel and now it will be in miles per min

 

90/3 * 1/60 = 1 mile/2 minutes

 

Now we will multiply by 1 min/60 seconds

 

1/2 * 1/60  = 1/120 miles per second  =  0.00833 miles per second