Question

You have perhaps heard the saying, “A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.”How many steps would you take to finish a journey of 1000 miles? What information do youneed in order to answer this question? Find a reasonable answer. What would your answerbe if the journey were 1000 kilometers?

Answer 1

We say that a single step has a length x miles, where x is a real number (and it is less than 1).

Now, if we need to travel 1000 miles, the number of steps can be calculated as:

(# of steps of size x) = (1000 miles) / (x miles)

n = 1000/x

Where n is the number of steps we need to take in order to finish a journey of 1000 miles. To solve this problem, we need to know the step length.

If the journey were 1000 km, we can use the conversion from miles to kilometers:

1 mi = 1.609 km

Then, the step length can be converted to:

x miles = 1.609 x km

And the number of steps would be:

n = (1000 km) / (1.609 x km)

n = 621.50/x