Question

The smallest whale shark was found in Donsol, Sorsogon. It measured \[38.0cm\] . How long is the whale shark in feet?

Answer 1

Hint: Problems of these types are pretty easy to solve once we understand about the various units and the conversion from one unit to another. In the SI or Standard International System, the unit based on which we do our conversions in length is metre (m). In the FPS system, we use the conversion of length as foot (f). So in this given problem, the measure of length has been given in centimetres, we first of all need to convert the given length into metres as we have a relation that,
\[1m=100cm\] . Now from the unit of metre, we need to convert it into feet by the relation that,
\[1m=3.28feet\] . Having done both the conversions simultaneously, we get our desired answer.

Complete step-by-step answer:
Now we start off with the solution to the given problem by first converting the given length in centimetres to metres, we have
\[\begin{align}
  & 100cm=1m \\
 & \Rightarrow 1cm=\dfrac{1}{100}m \\
 & \Rightarrow 38.0cm=\dfrac{38}{100}m=0.38m \\
\end{align}\]
Thus we get our required length in metres. Now our next step is to convert this found out length in metres to convert it into feet by using the given relation,
\[1m=3.28feet\]
Now to convert \[0.38m\] to feet we need to multiply both the sides of the equation by \[0.38\] . We evaluate it as,
\[\begin{align}
  & 0.38m=3.28\times 0.38feet \\
 & \Rightarrow 0.38m=1.2464feet \\
\end{align}\]
Thus our answer to the problem is \[1.2464feet\] .

Note: For problems like these we first of all need to be familiar with the various units of the measurement system and the conversion from one unit system to another. We need to be careful about converting the unit first to the SI system and then from this, we can convert it to any other system without any problem. One thing that we need to remember is the relations between the various units of measurements or else solving the problem may be cumbersome.