Question

A stack of 500 pieces of paper is 1.875 in tall. Diego guess is that each piece of paper is 0.015 inches thick. Explain how you know that Diego answer is incorrect. Compute the thickness of each piece of paper. Show you reasoning.

Answer 1

You divide 1.875 by 500 and get 0.00375 in. per paper

Answer 2

We can solve this problem with a proportion. On one side of the equals sign is one sheet paper of paper, on another side is for 500 sheets of paper. The top will be the number of sheets, the bottom the thickness.

$\frac{1}{T} =\frac{500}{1.875}$

We let T equal the thickness of one sheet of paper. We solve this proportion by cross multiplying.

500T = 1.875

T = 1.875 / 500 = 0.00375

Before, Diego guessed the paper was 0.0015 inches thick, and our proportion tells it is exactly 0.00375 inches thick. Diego overestimated the thickness.

Thus, one piece of paper has 0.0375 inches of thickness.