Question

help in a responde

Answer 1

The population of the USA has a net gain of 1 person every 14 seconds. How would you figure out how many additional persons this amounts to in one year? The important question is not the final answer, but your explanation of the process you would use to solve it.

Answer 2

@bibby would you mind helping me on this?

Answer 3

Through conversion factors. First figure out how many seconds are in a minute are in an hour are in a day are in a year

Answer 4

can you show an example please

Answer 5

let's say the speed of light is 200 m/s and we wanted it in meters per hour
\[\large \frac{200m}{1\cancel \sec}*\frac{60\cancel {\sec}}{1 \cancel \min}*\frac{60 \cancel \min}{1 hour}\]

Answer 6

wait so im confused on how we can convert number of people like that

Answer 7

using conversion factors and "cancelling" the units you don't use. Start off with\[\large \frac{1 person}{14\cancel \sec}*\frac{60\cancel {\sec}}{1 \cancel \min}*\frac{60 \cancel \min}{1 hour}\]=~257 persons an hour

Answer 8

ah okay, and then do i go from an hour to a year? or

Answer 9

from an hour to a day to a year

Answer 10

This is what I have so far

Answer 11

notice how I kept the units balanced so that I could cancel them. You want the 24 on top

Answer 12

is it nessecary to figure out how many hrs are in a a day?

Answer 13

yeah. that's the first step before you can multiply by the 365

Answer 14

24 in case you were unsure :D

Answer 15

but my units dont seem like they're cancelling tho

Answer 16

that's because you have them on the wrong ends of the fractions

Answer 17

\[\large \frac{1 person}{14\cancel \sec}*\frac{60\cancel {\sec}}{1 \cancel \min}*\frac{60 \cancel \min}{1 \cancel hour}*\frac{24 \cancel hours}{1 day}*\frac{365 days}{1 year}\]

Answer 18

yeah okay i fixed tat already, and so now will i stop there?

Answer 19

yeah. After we finish cancellations and do the multiplication/division. we end up with persons/year

Answer 20

i got a really funky number

Answer 21

I got 2,252,571.42

Answer 22

yeah thats the same thing i got, it was just to big of a number

Answer 23

if you want to check it, there are 31,557,600 seconds in a year. divide that by 14 and you get a similar number

Answer 24

okay so then that means that 2252571.429 people amount to a year

Answer 25

1

Answer 26

Yeah. Although they don't actually care about the number so much as how you get to it.

Answer 27

which is through that funky multiplication we did

Answer 28

If I did it this way I wouldn't get the same answer right?

Answer 29

not really. IF you do it that way, you end up with years per person not persons/year

Answer 30

And you can imagine how tiny a decimal 14 seconds out of a whole year is

Answer 31

ah ok yeah i understand. thank you ssoooo much! i really appreciate it!

Answer 32

no problem, glad I could help :D