I have to paint one side of a wall. The wall is 12 meters tall and 120 meters long. Each gallon of paint covers 150 square feet. If a foot is approximately 0.3048 meters, then what is the smallest whole number of gallons I can buy and have enough paint to cover the whole wall?

Answer 1

First we need to convert the dimensions of the wall from meters to feet:
12 meters = 39.37 feet
120 meters = 393.70 feet

The area of one side of the wall is 39.37 ft x 393.70 ft = 15,489.51 square feet.

We need to convert this into square meters so we can figure out how many gallons of paint we need:
1 square foot = 0.092903 square meters
15,489.51 square feet = 1,439.81 square meters

Each gallon of paint covers 150 square feet, which is 13.94 square meters:
150 square feet = 13.94 square meters

To find out how many gallons of paint we need, we divide the total area of the wall by the coverage per gallon of paint:
1,439.81 square meters ÷ 13.94 square meters/gallon = 103.27 gallons

Since we can't buy a fraction of a gallon, we need to round up to the nearest whole number. Therefore, we need to buy at least 104 gallons of paint to cover the whole wall.