Shannon made a scale drawing of a playground. She used a scale of 1 centimeter to 5 meters. In her drawing, the distance from the slide to the swings is 2 centimeters.

Question

Brian wants to make a scaled drawing of the same playground using a scale of 1 centimeter to 2 meters. In his drawing, what should the distance from the slide to the swings be?
Write your answer as a whole number or decimal.
centimeters

Answer 1

To find the distance from the slide to the swings in Brian's drawing, we first need to determine the actual distance based on Shannon's drawing.

Shannon's scale is 1 centimeter to 5 meters. Since the distance from the slide to the swings in her drawing is 2 centimeters, we can calculate the actual distance:

\[ \text{Actual distance} = \text{Drawing distance} \times \text{Scale Factor} \] \[ \text{Actual distance} = 2 , \text{cm} \times 5 , \text{m/cm} = 10 , \text{meters} \]

Now, we need to convert this actual distance into Brian's scale, which is 1 centimeter to 2 meters. To find the distance in Brian's drawing, we use the same formula:

\[ \text{Drawing distance} = \frac{\text{Actual distance}}{\text{Scale Factor}} = \frac{10 , \text{meters}}{2 , \text{m/cm}} = 5 , \text{centimeters} \]

Therefore, the distance from the slide to the swings in Brian's drawing should be 5 centimeters.