In this example,
we're told a person is five feet eight inches tall.
We want to find their height in inches,
centimeters, and meters.
So, if the person is five feet eight inches tall,
their height would be the same
as five feet plus eight inches,
which means if we convert five feet to inches,
the sum will give us the height in inches.
So we'll start by converting five feet to inches
using the conversion that one foot is equal to 12 inches.
To do the conversion, we'll use unit fractions.
So we'll write five feet as a fraction,
which would be five feet over one.
We're going to multiply it by our unit fraction
to do the conversion using the fact
that 12 inches equals one foot.
'Cause we want feet to simplify out of this product,
feet must be in the denominator
and inches must be in the numerator.
If we have feet in the numerator and feet in the denominator
those units will simplify out.
So now, using the conversion,
we know one foot is equal to 12 inches,
and therefore, we're just multiplying by one,
but changing units.
So, feet over feet simplify out,
and this product converts five feet to inches,
five times 12 inches is equal to 60 inches,
which means five feet eight inches is equal
to 60 inches plus eight inches,
which is equal to 68 inches.
So this is the first part of the problem.
The height in inches is 68 inches.
And now, for the next part, we also want to express
the height in centimeters, so now,
we'll convert 68 inches to centimeters using the conversion
of one inch is approximately equal to 2.540 centimeters.
So we want to find out approximately how many centimeters
is equal to the 68 inches,
and we are asked to round
to the nearest tenth of a centimeter,
and again, we'll do this conversation using unit fractions.
So, we'll start with 68 inches,
write it as 68 inches over one,
we're going to multiply it by our unit fraction
using this conversion.
We want inches to simplify out of the product,
therefore inches must be in the denominator,
and centimeters must be in the numerator.
Now, we'll use the conversion
one inch is approximately equal to 2.540 centimeters.
Notice that the units of inches simplifies out
therefore this product will give us our conversion.
Notice our denominator is equal to one,
so now we'll go to the calculator.
68 times 2.540, rounded to the nearest tenth
would be 172.7 centimeters.
So, five feet eight inches, or 68 inches,
is approximately 172.7 centimeters.
Now, for the last question,
we want to find the height in meters,
so now we'll convert 172.7 centimeters to meters.
So, again, we'll use a unit fraction,
so we have 172.7 centimeters over one
and the conversion is one meter is equal to 100 centimeters
so we're going to multiply it by a unit fraction
where now, centimeters will be in the denominator
and meters will be in the numerator,
and the conversion is 100 centimeters is equal to one meter.
Again, notice how the units of the centimeters
simplifies out,
so we're left with 172.7 meters divided by 100.
Dividing by 100 is the same
as moving the decimal point to the left two places,
so we can say that 172.7 centimeters
is equal to 1.727 meters.
Of course, if we need to,
we can check this on the calculator.
Notice in this example, because we had a denominator,
we would have to perform division.
172.7 divided by 100 is 1.727.
Before we go, let's go ahead and summarize this.
We found five feet eight inches is equal to 68 inches.
We also found that five feet eight inches
was approximately equal to 172.7 centimeters.
We also found that five feet eight inches
is approximately 1.727 meters.
OK, hope you found this explanation helpful.