A scale drawing showing the distance from your house to the school has a scale of 1.5 cm to 5 km. If the actual distance from your house to the school is 30 km, what is the distance on the drawing?

Answer 1

Any problem like this can be set up as two fractions equal to each other. Just make sure each of the fractions has the same part of the question on the top. In this case, you can do cm over km.

1.5/5 = x/30

1.5 cm over 5 km equals x cm over 30 km.

Then you cross multiply. Multiply the top of the first fraction by the bottom of the second fraction.

1.5 x 30 = 45

And multiply the bottom of the first fraction by the top of the second.

5 x x = 5x

Now you have 5x = 45.

Divide both sides by 5 to get the x by itself.

x = 9.

The answer is 9 cm.