if a patio is to be 16ft by 12 ft and each block is 12in by 8 in how much will it cost to build the patio if each block is 75 cents?

Question

how do I set up the problem to figure out how much it will cost?

Answer 1

You need to figure out the total area of the patio and the area of each block.  Then divide the area of the patio by the area of each block to figure out how many blocks you need.

 

The total area is 16 * 12 = 192 square feet.

 

Each block is 1 foot by 8 inches.  8 inches is 8/12 = 2/3 feet.  So the area of each block is 1 * 2/3 = 2/3 square feet.

 

So you would need 192 / (2/3) =  288 blocks.  At 75 cents per block, that's $216