201k views
5 votes
How many people will the Walmart parking lot hold if it's in the shape of a triangle with a base of 490 feet and a height of 110 feet, and each rectangular parking spot can hold 32 people?

User Tony Wall
by
8.7k points

1 Answer

7 votes

OK, let's tackle this question step by step:

Firstly, we need to calculate the area of the parking lot, which we know is in the shape of a triangle. Using the formula for the area of a triangle (which is 0.5 x base x height), we get:

0.5 * 490 feet * 110 feet = 26,950 square feet

So, our parking lot has a total area of 26,950 square feet.

Next, we know that each parking spot can hold 32 ordinary-sized people. This suggests that the surface area of each parking spot is 32 square feet, which we can calculate as the square root of 32 and squaring it again.

Mathematically, we have sqrt(32) = 5.66 feet (approx) as one side of the parking spot, however due to the square nature of parking spaces, the actual area is 5.66*5.66 = 32 square feet.

Now that we know the area of our parking lot and the area of each parking spot, we can calculate how many parking spots the lot can hold. We do this by dividing the total available area of parking lot by the area of a parking spot:

26,950 square feet / 32 square feet = 842 parking spots

This division gives us a remainder, but since we can't have a fraction of a parking spot, we round down to the nearest whole number, which is 842.

Finally, we multiply the number of parking spots by how many people each spot can hold to find out how many people in total our parking lot can hold:

842 parking spots * 32 people per spot = 26,944 people

Therefore, the parking lot can hold 26,944 people if each spot can hold 32 people.

User Stephen RC
by
8.6k points
Welcome to QAmmunity.org, where you can ask questions and receive answers from other members of our community.