Sammi built a dunk tank for the school festival. The tank holds 350 gallons of water, and she needs to convert that measurement to liters. Her work is shown below.

Question

StartFraction 350 gallons Over 1 EndFraction times StartFraction 1 gallon Over 3.79 liters EndFraction almost-equals 92.3 liters

What is Sammi’s error?
The conversion factor should have gallons in the denominator.
She should have used two conversion factors.
She should not have used a conversion factor.
The answer should be in gallons.

Answer 1

Sammi's error is that "The conversion factor should have gallons in the denominator."

In her calculation, she correctly set up the conversion by placing gallons in the numerator, but to convert gallons to liters, she should have had the conversion factor with gallons in the denominator to cancel out the gallons. The correct conversion should look like this:

\[ 350 \text{ gallons} \times \frac{3.79 \text{ liters}}{1 \text{ gallon}} = 1320.5 \text{ liters} \]

Thus, the proper conversion factor would be \( \frac{3.79 \text{ liters}}{1 \text{ gallon}} \) to yield an accurate conversion result.