Advanced 6th grade math word problem

Question

James’ Little brother has a plastic box in the shape of a rectangular prism. The plastic box is 9 1/2 inches long, 5 1/2 inches wide, and 3 inches high. James wants to know how many cubic shaped building blocks with edge links of 1/2 inch Could fit in the plastic box. How many building blocks could fit in the plastic box?

Answer 1

First you should convert the mixed numbers to improper fractions, i.e

9 1/2 = 19/2 and 5 1/2 = 11/2.

The volume of the box is (19/2) * (5/2) * 3 = 285/4

The volume of each little cube is (1/2) * (1/2) * (1/2) = 1/8

The number of cubes in the box will be (285/4) / (1/8).

The rule for division of fractions is invert the denominator and multiply; therefore

the number of blocks which will fit is (285/4) * 8 = 570.