Word problem question

Question

Winston had a piece of plastic tubing that was originally 12 2/5 feet long. If 9 1/2 feet were cut off, how long was the remaining piece of plastic tubing?

Answer 1

Winston had a piece of plastic tubing that was originally 12 2/5 feet long. If 9 1/2 feet were cut off, how long was the remaining piece of plastic tubing?

This problem involves subtracting mixed numbers. You could do this one of two ways, either find a common denominator or convert the fractions to decimals.

To convert the fractions to decimals we know that 1/2 is the same as .5. 1/5 is the same as .2, so 2/5 would be .4

So you would have 12.4-9.5

To find the common denominators of the fractions, find the least common multiple of the denominators 2 and 5 (which is 10). Once you have your new fractions, you can subtract.

Answer 2

To find the remaining piece of plastic you need to do 12 2/5 - 9 1/2 = 62/5 - 19/2=124/10 - 95/10 = 29/10 =

2 9/10 feet.