Question

Eurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting

London with Paris and Brussels,
In February, 350,000 passengers travelled by Eurostar,
Each train has 15 carriages and each carriage has 32 seats,


If all the empty seats are on
the last train, find:

the number of empty carriages
you could make

the number of empty seats across
all the other carriages,​

Answer 1

Explanation:

This is simply a units conversion problem. It gives us for the number of passengers, the number of seats per carriage and the number of carriages per train. To change the units from passengers to trains without changing the value, we use the multiplicative identity (that is, 1).

350000 passengers

(350000 passengers) * 1

(350000 passengers) * ((1 carriage)/(32 passengers)) * ((1 train)/(15 carriages)

[note: passengers and carriages cancel. Leaving only trains]

(350000)*(1/32)*(1/15) trains [note: I write this way to paste into MS Excel]

729.1667 trains [oh, but don’t just round this number either up or down]

729 full trains can carry 729*32*15 = 349920 passengers

730 full trains can carry 730*32*15 = 350400 passengers

Now, we can say that 730 trains are adequate to carry 350000 passengers.