Scale drawings - prealgebra

Question

John made a scale drawing of his bedroom using a scale of 1/2 cm = 1 meter. The actual length of his bedroom is

4 2/5 meters. What is the length of John’s bedroom on the scale drawing?

Answer 1

Hi Jennifer. You can arrange 2 fractions = to each other to solve it.

Make it 1/2 cm. / 1 meter = x cm. / 4 2/5 meters.

Cross multiply. You get 1/2 x 4 2/5 = 1x.

Changing 4 2/5 to an improper fraction, you get 22/5.

So 1/2 x 22/5 = 22/10, which reduces to 11/5.

So 11/5 cm. = 1x, and is the answer to the scale drawing of the bedroom.