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21 votes
21 votes
Find the scale of a map if 4.2 cm on the map corresponds to an actual distance of 6.2 km.

User NiklasLehnfeld
by
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1 Answer

11 votes
11 votes

Answer:

21/3100000 ≈ 1/147619

Explanation:

You want the scale of a map on which 4.2 cm corresponds to an actual distance of 6.2 km.

Scale

The scale of a drawing is the ratio of drawing distance to actual distance. It can be expressed a couple of ways. We can write the given scale as ...

4.2 cm : 6.2 km

or, we can reduce it to ...

2.1 cm : 3.1 km

Often, we like to have a single unit of map distance in this ratio, which would make it be approximately ...

1 cm : 1.47619 km

Fraction

Another way to write the scale of a map is as a fraction.

(4.2 cm)/(6.2 km) = (0.042 m)/(6200 m) = 21/3100000

When this is expressed as a unit fraction, the denominator is a repeating decimal with a 6-digit repeat. We can round it to ...

≈ 1/147619 . . . . map scale

The scale of the map is ...

21/3100000 ≈ 1/147619 or 2.1 cm : 3.1 km or ≈ 1 cm : 1.47619 km

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Additional comment

You may need to round the answer to match one of your answer choices.

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Find the scale of a map if 4.2 cm on the map corresponds to an actual distance of-example-1
User Xxg
by
3.4k points