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A gallon of paint can cover 360 square feet. The radius of a standandard NBA basketball is 4.75 inches. How many basketballs will the paint cover? ( note 144 square inches in 1 square foot )

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Answer: 182 basketballs

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Step-by-step explanation:

We're told that 1 square foot is 144 square inches (this is from 12*12 = 144, since 12 inches = 1 ft).

So because of this, 360 square feet converts to 360*144 = 51,840 square inches.

One gallon of paint can cover 51,840 square inches.

Now let's find the surface area of the sphere, aka ball.

It has a radius of r = 4.75 inches, so,

SA = 4*pi*r^2

SA = 4*pi*(4.75)^2

SA = 90.25pi

SA = 283.528736986479 which is approximate

The surface area of one ball is roughly 283.528736986479 square inches.

Divide the amount of area the paint can cover over the surface area of one basketball:

(51,840)/(283.528736986479) = 182.838609415709

This rounds down to 182. We round down because we won't have enough paint to cover the 183rd basketball.

One gallon of paint can cover 182 basketballs.

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