Question

Question Solve the following word problem. A fish is swimming at −10.8 meters, or 10.8 meters below sea level. Every 2 minutes it descends another 1.5 meters. How long will it take for the fish to reach a depth of −37.8 meters? Show your work and write a sentence to explain what your answer means. write it like a 7th grader

Answer 1

To find out how long it will take for the fish to reach a depth of -37.8 meters, we need to figure out how deep the fish wants to go starting from its current depth of -10.8 meters.

1. **Calculate the total distance the fish needs to descend:**
- Desired depth: -37.8 meters
- Current depth: -10.8 meters

We can find the difference by subtracting:
\[
-37.8 \text{ meters} - (-10.8 \text{ meters}) = -37.8 + 10.8 = -27 \text{ meters}
\]
So, the fish needs to descend 27 meters.

2. **Determine how quickly the fish is descending:**
The fish descends 1.5 meters every 2 minutes.

3. **Figure out how many 1.5 meter descents it needs to reach 27 meters:**
To find out how many times the fish descends 1.5 meters, we divide the total distance it needs to go by how far it goes every time:
\[
\frac{27 \text{ meters}}{1.5 \text{ meters}} = 18
\]
This means the fish needs to descend 1.5 meters a total of 18 times.

4. **Calculate the total time it will take:**
Since it takes 2 minutes for each descent, we multiply the number of descents by the time per descent:
\[
18 \text{ descents} \times 2 \text{ minutes/descend} = 36 \text{ minutes}
\]

So, it will take the fish **36 minutes** to reach a depth of -37.8 meters.

**In a sentence:** It will take the fish 36 minutes to swim down to a depth of 37.8 meters below sea level.