Writing And Evaluating Scientific Notation Worksheet Page 6
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1530. Applying Decimal Operations
Lost in Space
I'm sure you've all heard about the costly mix-up resulting in the loss of NASA's
Mars Climate Orbiter in late September of 1999. It seems the engineers in
Colorado were working with English units (aka Imperial or Customary units) and the
engineers in California were working with metric units. Neither group caught the
discrepancy!
This is a pretty hard lesson about how important units are, especially considering
the spacecraft was worth about $125 million. Jeepers! I'd hate to have to pay for
that out of my allowance.
Let's take a look at this error on a smaller scale. Suppose the engineers in Colorado
designed a square panel that was one yard by one yard, but the engineers in
California thought the panel was one meter by one meter when they constructed it.
What is the difference, expressed in metric units, in the areas of the two panels?
You will have to find a unit conversion between yards and meters to solve this!
Bonus: Express this difference as a percentage of the smaller panel (i.e., the bigger
panel is what percent larger than the smaller panel?).
31. Irish Specials
Last Wednesday my family and our Irish friend, Moira, went out for dinner to
celebrate St. Patrick's Day. As we entered the restaurant, we saw this sign:
The menu included the following items:
Cooked cabbage
$1.25
Irish potatoes
$1.75
French fries
$2.25
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