Question

Jim wants to put carpet in four identical rooms. Each room is 14 ft by 20.5 ft. A roll of carpet will cover 200 ft² . How many rolls will he need?

Showing your work would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

14 x 20.5 = 287
That's for one room.
287 x 4 = 1148
For all rooms.
He will need 6 rolls.
If he had 5, it would be less than the required amount.

Answer 2

Jim will have to buy 6 carpets of 200 ft².

Explanation:

This is a case of calculating areas, first we have to know much area have each one of the rooms and then multiply it by 4 to cover all the rooms. To calculate an square area we multiply the distance of each side, this is:

`OneRoom=14*20.5=287`

One room has 287 ft².

Now we can calculate the area of the four rooms:

`FourRooms=287*4=1,148\\`

The total area of the four rooms is 1,148 ft².

Now we can calculate how much carpet we need to cover all the area, this is a case of a division, this is:

`RollsNeed=(1,148)/(200) =5.74`

Now we have that we need 5.74 carpets of 200 ft², but the carpets are sell by integers, so Jim will have to buy 6 carpets of 200 ft².