Easy but difficult :) "The volume of a garden is 6.52 cubic metres...."

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Willo G

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The volume of a garden is 6.52 cubic metres. Bags of soil are being sold at a capacity of 5cubic decimetres. If 1cubic dm = 0.001 cubic metres and 1dm = 0.1m , determine the amount of bags which should be purchased. Also determine the percentage of soil purchased , that will not be used.
 
Hi, This is a help site so it would be good if you can tell us what type of help you need. If you have made an attempt at this problem, then please post your work.
 
OK , so I've spent about two nights thinking about this problem and just can't solve it . The budget for the project is $12500. The price of 1 bag of soil is $455 . When I used the above conversion the total price of the soil comes to about half a million $ . What I ended up doing was converting the 6.52 cubic metres to cubic dm which gave me 6520 cubic dm . I divided that answer with 5cubic dm and multiplied the answer of 1304dm3 with 1/10 power 2 . It gae me 13.04 bags of soil which seems much more realistic. Please verify that asnwer.
 
First of all. 5 cubic decimeters is approximately 0.18 cubic feet.
You're going to pay $455 for that small amount of soil?

The link shows an relatively "expensive" 0.75 cubic feet bag of topsoil for $3.47
Scott's Topsoil Home Depot

6.52 cubic meters is approximately 230 cubic feet ... for the Home Depot premium bag of soil, that would translate to a bit over 300 bags, costing about $1065.
 
Willo G said:
OK , so I've spent about two nights thinking about this problem and just can't solve it . The budget for the project is $12500. The price of 1 bag of soil is $455 . When I used the above conversion the total price of the soil comes to about half a million $ . What I ended up doing was converting the 6.52 cubic metres to cubic dm which gave me 6520 cubic dm . I divided that answer with 5cubic dm and multiplied the answer of 1304dm3 with 1/10 power 2 . It gae me 13.04 bags of soil which seems much more realistic. Please verify that asnwer.
Click to expand...
Please show us the actual data, from your source, for the size and price of a bag (perhaps an image of an advertisement or catalog entry, or a textbook if this is not a real problem) so we can see if you are misreading it. I'd picture a bag being more like a cubic foot or so; that 0.75 cubic feet bag would be around 20 cubic decimeters, not 5. (I was wondering if you might have meant dekameters, but that would be much too large!)

Your final step here appears to be magic, intended only to make the number look reasonable. 1304 bags is correct for the numbers you used; there is no reason to divide it by 100.
 
The top soil needs to be 1cm thick and cover the whole surface of the garden.
Calculate the volume, in cubic meters, of the topsoil needed.
Use the internet of necessary resources to ensure that you use the correct
formula. (4)
The top soil is sold in bags of 5 dm3 at $455,75 per bag. Note that
1 dm3= 0,001 m3 and 1 decimeter (dm) = 1/10 metre.

The surface area of the garden is 652 square metres
 
Willo G said:
The top soil is sold in bags of 5 dm3 at $455,75 per bag.
Click to expand...

Is this a real-world problem, or one made up for practice in metric area/volume measurements?
The given price for 5 cubic decimeters tells me there must be an error in the problem setup.

6.52 cubic meters is the correct amount of topsoil needed, however, that equals 6520 cubic decimeters of soil. At 5 cubic decimeters per bag, that translates to 1304 bags.

1304 bags times $455.75 per bag is just under $600,000.00 ... a truly ridiculous result.
 
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