Question

A blue whale was once recorded with a length of 36 yards. How many centimeters long was the whale if 1 inch is 2.54 cm.

Answer 1

Hint: Now to convert the length into centimeters we will first convert the length in inches by using the fact that 1 yard = 36 inches. Now we know that 1 inch is 2.54 cm hence we will convert the length from inches to centimeters by multiplying 2.54. Hence we have the length of whale in centimeters.

Complete step-by-step answer:
Now let us first understand the concept of measurement.
Measurement is nothing but quantifying things for reference. Now let us say we know that the whale is long. But long can be a respective term. Hence to be precise we use measurement to answer the question how long.
To measure different things we have standard units.
Units are a definite magnitude of a quantity. There can be different units for the same quantity. For example for length we have centimeters, meters, kilometers, inches, feet, yards etc.
Now we can convert the measurement unit from one to another by multiplying or dividing by a particular factor. For example we have 1 meter that is 100 centimeters. Hence to convert from meters to centimeters we will multiply by 100 similarly to convert from centimeters to meters we will divide by 100.
Now we are given that the length of the whale was 36 yards.
Now we have 1 yards = 36 inches.
Hence the length 36 yards = 36 × 36 inches.
Hence we have 36 yards = 1296 inches.
Now again we are given that 1 inch is 2.54 cm.
Hence 1296 inches is 1296 × 2.54 cm
Hence the length of whale is 3291.84 cm.

Note: Now note that the units are standard measurement and hence precise. Also keep a note that if we want to convert the unit into a bigger unit then we divide the term and if we want to convert from a bigger unit to smaller unit then we multiply. Now since 1 meter is greater than 1cm we call the meter a bigger unit.