The speed limit on a certain part of the highway is 65 miles per hour. What is this in feet per minute?
This is a simple math problem, but the hang-up is that you have to know a couple of facts that aren't presented here before you begin. What's missing? You need to know two facts:
- There are 5,280 feet in a mile.
- There are 60 minutes in an hour.
If your car is traveling 65 miles per hour, then it is also going 343,200 feet (65 × 5,280 = 343,200) per hour. Then, you can divide the total feet per hour by 60, and you know that your car is traveling 5,720 feet per minute.
As a quick check, does this answer look correct? If you were travelling 5 miles per hour slower, at a steady 60 mph, you would be driving 60 miles every 60 minutes, or a mile a minute. If you're driving 65 miles per hour, then, you ought to be going just over a mile a minute — specifically, 1 mile and 440 feet.
While it's common knowledge that an hour contains 60 minutes, a lot of people don't know how many feet are in a mile. If you needed to find this data, a simple Internet search would bring it forward. Have a look at the article on Cliffsnotes.com called Research on the Internet to fine-tune your online research skills.