ShmoopTube

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When I shmoop, you shmoop, we shmoop…

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Iron Man experienced a glitch with his new suit, and it took him a while to find the “stop” button.

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In the meantime, he flew for 2.5 hours at an average speed of 325 mph.

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The arithmetic operation used to find the distance that Iron Man traveled during this

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time can also be used to solve which of the following problems?

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And here are the potential answers...

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So… This question is really about leverage –

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it’s taking a constant and multiplying it by a rate.

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If we were to solve the problem at hand, where Iron Man traveled 325 miles in ONE hour…

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…we’d multiply that number by 2.5 to find out how far he traveled in 2.5 hours.

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So… which one of our choices does the same thing?

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To solve A, we’d use real basic addition… so that answer is clearly a decoy.

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To solve B, it’s basic subtraction. Also not going to cut the mustard.

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What about C? A nickel for each student… five cents times 25…

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so we’re looking at multiplication here. Just as we hoped.

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We’re guessing choice D will be a dud… and sure enough, we’d need to use division to solve it.

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So… C it is.

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As in… “Check the User’s Manual.”

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