The scale of a map is 1 cm : 78km. What is the actual distance between two towns that are 4 cm apart on the map?

Answer 1

1 cm : 78 km

4 cm : 4(78) km

Answer 2

Hi Passiana! You can follow the reasoning Mark listed above but in further explanation, this is a conversion problem that you can set up as a simple proportion or ratio and solve for your variable, which is defined as the actual distance in km.

They give you:

1cm : 78km

We want to find:

4cm : ?km

Set up as a proportion:

1cm / 78km = 4cm / x km

Now you can solve for x by cross multiplying!:

(78)(4) = (1)(x)

312 = x

So the actual distance is 312 km