Question

The real distance between a village shop and a park is 1.8 km. The distance between them on a map is 3 cm. What is the scale of the map? Write your answer as a ratio in its simplest form.

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Answer 1

The scale factor of the map is 1:60,000, meaning that 1 cm on the map represents 60,000 cm or 0.6 km in real life.

To find the scale of the map, we need to determine the ratio between the distance on the map and the actual distance. In this case, the distance on the map is 3 cm and the actual distance is 1.8 km. We can set up the ratio as follows:

Map distance: Actual distance = 3 cm: 1.8 km

To simplify this ratio, we need to convert km to cm. Since 1 km is equal to 100,000 cm, we can multiply the actual distance by 100,000 to get:

Map distance: Actual distance = 3 cm: 180,000 cm

Now we can simplify the ratio by dividing both distances by the greatest common divisor, which is 3:

Map distance: Actual distance = 1 cm: 60,000 cm

Therefore, the scale of the map is 1:60,000.