Quandaries and Queries
  

 

I am having a problem with this question becasue I don't understand the metric system. my question is if you put a million sheets of 30 cm long paper end to end, how many kilometer long would the paper be from begining to end? PLease help me on this for I am going nuts with this question.

Thank You

Jennifer
Parent of a sixth grader

 

 

Hi Jennifer,

The metric system is nice to work with once you get all the prefixes straight.

Each sheet is 30 cm long and you put 1 000 000 sheets end to end, thus this will stretch for

30 000 000 centimeters There are 100 centimeters in one meter and hence the sheets stretch for 300 000 meters Finally there are 1 000 meters in a kilometer and thus the sheets stretch for 300 kilometers.

One mile is approximately 1.6 kilometers so 300 kilometers is approximately  300/1.6 = 188 miles.

I hope this helps,
Penny
 
 

Go to Math Central