Question

A road crew is widening a street that is 24 m wide. Their scale drawing says the new street has to be 125% of the width of the old street. How wide should the new street be? A. 19.2 m B. 28 m C. 30 m D. 300 m

Answer 1

If the street is already 24 m wide, and it is being expanded by 125%, then the correct answer is C. 30 m!

125% simply means 1 1/4. 1/4 of 24 is 6. So, you have 24 + 6 = 30!

Answer 2

The correct answer is C: the new street should be 30m wide.

Explanation:

This is a simple problem of per-cents. Perhaps the easiest way to do it is to use a basic ‘‘rule of three’’. In this particular case the 100% is the width of the old street, i.e. 24 m; and we want to know the new width, that is 125% of the old street. So,

24 ---- 100%

x ----- 125%

To find x we use the formula

`x = (24*125)/(100) = 3000/100=30`

So, the width of the new street is 30m.