A room has 300 feet of wall space to paint. Sam says it took her 10 minutes to paint 25 square feet. At this rate how many hours would it take Sam to paint?

Question

Please help. dont rly understand and need to know! Thanks for helping out

Answer 1

Whenever you do a problem and it keeps the same ratio but scales it up, that calls for a proportion:

 

(10 min) / (25 square feet)   =  (X min) / (300 square feet)

Cross-multiply to solve, as we always do with proportions:

10 * 300  = 25 * x

 3000       = 25X

 3000/25  = 25X /25

     120     = X

Remember -- this time is in minutes, NOT the hours they requested! We have to adjust for that!

120 minutes * (1 hour / 60 minutes) = 2 hours

Answer 2

The easiest way to solve this (probably) is to see it as a proportion

 

10/25 = x/300 => 25x = 300 and x = 12