Question

You have been asked to build a scale model of your school out of toothpicks. Imagine your school is 30 feet tall. Your scale is 1 ft:1.68 cm.

If a toothpick is 6.3 cm tall, how many toothpicks tall will your model be?

The model will be
toothpicks tall.

Your mother is out of toothpicks, and suggests you use cotton swabs instead. You measure them, and they are 7.6 cm tall. How many cotton swabs tall will your model be? If necessary, round your answer to the nearest whole number.

The model will be approximately
cotton swabs tall.

Answer 1

8 toothpicks

7 cotton swabs

Explanation:

Since the school is 30 feet tall and the scale is 1 ft : 1.68 cm, 30 feet will require a scale model of 1.68 x 30 = 50.4 cm

Since each toothpick is 6.3 cm tall, the total number of toothpicks required for 50.4 cm = 50.4/6.3 = 8 toothpicks

If using cotton swabs each 7.6 cm tall, the number of cotton swabs would be 50.4/7.6 = 6.63

Rounding this to the nearest number means you will need 7 cotton swabs