The current price of bunker fuel , (also known as heavy oil fuel ) costs $350 per metric ton. For a large cargo ship, approximately 0.1 metric tons of fuel is used for each mile sailing.

Question

The current price of bunker fuel , (also known as heavy oil fuel ) costs $350 per metric ton. For a large cargo

ship, approximately 0.1 metric tons of fuel is used for each mile sailing.

7) Calculate the approximate cost of fuel per mile (multiply 0.1 mt/mile to the price).

Answer 1

Hi again Bee!

This question is getting you used to unit conversions, which is manipulating rates of things and getting the answers you need!

If you're unfamiliar with cancelling with multiplying and dividing, here's how that works:

Looking at 2 * (3 * 5 / 2), you can cancel both 2's because 2 divided by 2 is just 1 and be left with 3 * 5.

Likewise, if it was 4 * (3 * 5 / 2), you can turn that into 2 * 2 * 3 * 5 / 2 and be left with 2 * 3 * 5.

It saves you work to cancel when you can, and cancelling works the same with units!

In this problem, we are given the following rates:

$350 per metric ton, or 350 $ / MT

and 0.1 MT / mile (sailing).

What we need is $ / mile, and you already have the hint of the one step we need to do. So, let's set up the equation:

350 $ . 0.1 MT = 35 $

1 MT 1 mile 1 mile

The "metric tons" cancel out because "metric ton" divided by "metric ton" equals 1. You don't need to write the 1's of course in each denominator, but the idea is that you may use 2 metric tons or 20, but it will cost $350 for each metric ton - and thus $35 for every mile you sail. This will be useful if they know how far their trip is, so that they can find how much they will need to budget for fuel.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Hi Bee M:

This is actually a very simple problem. Let's do it.

First, fuel cost $350 / ton

Second, for each mile the ship travels, it uses 0.1 tons of fuel = 0.1 x $350 = $35 /mile

∴ For a trip of 3392.7 miles, the ship uses fuel costing 3392.7 x $35 = $118,744.50

That's it!