Question

Andre is preparing for the school play and needs to paint the cardboard castle backdrop that measures 16 1/3 feet by 6 feet.

1. How much cardboard does he need to paint?
2. If one bottle of paint covers an area of 30 square feet, how many bottles of paint does Andre need for his backdrop? (Remember, he can't buy a partial bottle of paint.)

Answer 1

1. To find how much cardboard he needs to paint you need to find the area of the cardboard which is length times width. So in this case, it would be 16 1/3 feet times 6 feet. Or 49/3 times 6/1. This gives you 294/3 or 98 feet.
2. To find this you would divide the total area by how much area each bottle covers to find how many bottles you need. 98 divided by 30 is 98/30 which reduces to 49/15 or 3 4/15. Since you can’t have 4/15 of a bottle, you’d round up to 5 bottles of paint.