open response help

Question

The room is rectangular in shape. The floor is 18 ft. 5 in long by 9 ft 6 in wide.

All of the walls are 8 ft high. You will not paint the windows nor the doors. There are two doors each of which is 7 ft 3 in. high by 3 ft wide. One window is 4 ft wide by 5 ft. high. There are also two windows that are 2 ft 6 in wide by 5 ft high.

More:

1)    There are 12 inches in a foot. So inches are not the same as decimals. Each inch is 1/12 of a foot. Convert all inches to fractions of a foot and then to decimals. Then round each decimal to the nearest hundredth.

Hint: You will be working on the room described above. But to help you understand what you should do, look at a room in your house. How can you determine the dimensions of each wall by knowing the dimensions of the floor and the height of the wall? Also, there are 4 wall, so what would the dimension be of each wall? Also, if you know the dimensions of the floor, what will the dimensions of the ceiling be? Remember, you are doing this for the room described above (not a room in your house).

Calculate how much paint you will need to paint the walls of this room. To properly paint the walls, you will need to put one coat of primer paint and two coats of finish paint. For each calculation, briefly explain your work. Refer to “Example of a good response.“

  1.   Calculate the area of each wall, including any doors and windows.

  Wall 1:

           Wall 2:

           Wall 3:

           Wall 4:

Answer 1

Given: neither the doors nor the windows are painted

Assumption: the floor and ceiling likewise will not be painted

Not given: how much the paint and primer cover in terms of square feet per gallon

The area of a rectangle is length x width. For each of the walls, the 'width' is the height of the room or 8 feet. The 'length' will be 18 5/12 feet for the 2 larger walls and 9.5 feet for the shorter 2. The amount of wall to be painted is the sum of the 4 walls' areas minus the areas of the 2 doors and 3 windows. Once you know the coverage statistics for both the primer and paint, you can figure out how many gallons of each you need for 1 coat of primer and 2 coats of paint.