Question

A dressmaker needs to cut 4-inch pieces of ribbon from rolls of ribbon that are 12 feet in length. How many 4-inch pieces can the dressmaker cut from 5 of these rolls of ribbon?

Before you try that problem, answer the question below.

How many inches of ribbon does the dressmaker have, in total?

Answer 1

15 pieces

Explanation:

First, 4 goes into twelve 3 times. since it goes in three times, and you have 5 rolls, you would just multiply the two together.

3*5 = 15 pieces

Answer 2

Question #1

First we have to convert feet to inches.

Knowing that 1 foot is 12 inches we just need to multiply our values by 12.

Meaning that 12 feet of a roll of ribbon is basically 144 inches.

That isn't our final answer because he has 5 rolls so we multiply our answer by 5.

12×12 = 144 ← how many inches are in a single roll

144×5 = 720 So in total there are 720 inches in total.

Question #2

Now that we answered one of the questions we can use this information to answer the other question asking us how many 4 inch pieces can he make from the 5 rolls.

As mentioned above we know the 5 rolls are equivalent to 720 inches..

So we will take that number and divide it by 4.

720÷4 = 180

Meaning that 180 4-inch pieces can be made.

Statement

Therefore the dressmaker has 720 inches of ribbon and with that is able to make 180 4 inch pieces from it.