Question

Marisol is in a bathtub that is shaped like a rectangular prism, about 5 ft long, 2 ft wide, and 1 ft deep. She is drinking hot cocoa that is in a cylindrical mug about 3 in. wide and 4 in. tall. She wonders how many mugs of water it would take to fill her tub. Her reasoning, shown here, contains an error.

The bathtub has a volume of about 17,280 in³, or about 1×10^4 in³.
The mug has a volume of about 28 in³, or about 3×10^1 in³.

1×10^4/3×10^ 1=1/3×10^3 , so about 333 mugs of water would fill the bathtub.

What is Marisol's error?

The volume of the mug is not 28 in³.
The volume of the tub is not abut 17,280 in³.
The value 17,280 should have been rounded to 2×10^4 .
The value 28 should have been rounded to 2×10^1

Answer 1

The value 17,280 should have been rounded to 2×10^4 .

Answer 2

Based on the given reasoning that is presented above, the mistake that Marisol have done is that she rounded down the value 17,280 in³ into 1 x 10⁴ when in fact the value following 1 is higher than 5. This gave a very big discrepancy from the calculated value to what the correct answer is supposed to be. The answer is the third choice.