Question

A museum is building a scale model of Sue, the largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found. Sue was 13 feet tall and 40 feet long, and her skull had a length of 5 feet. If the length of the museum's scale model skull is 3 feet, 1.5 inches, what is the difference between the scale model's length and its height?

A) 8 feet, 1.5 inches
B) 16 feet, 10.5 inches
C) 22 feet, 6.5 inches
D) 27 feet, 4 inches

Answer 1

Answer:

B) 16 ft, 10.5 in

Step-by-step explanation:

There are a few different ways you can work this. Since we want to know the difference between length and heigh of the model and we are given skull length of the model, it makes a certain amount of sense to find the corresponding measurements of the actual skeleton.

The actual skeleton's length was 40 ft and its height was 13 ft, so the difference between these dimensions is ...

40 ft - 13 ft = 27 ft

The actual skull is 5 ft long, so the difference is ...

(27 ft)/(5 ft) = 5.4

times the length of the skull.

The same ratio will apply to the model, so the difference between the model height and model length is 5.4 times the length of the model skull:

desired difference = 5.4 × 3 ft 1.5 in = 16.2 ft + 8.1 in

= 16 ft 10.5 in