Question 18

Hello everyone! Nicky again to talk to you about icebergs. Well, a specific iceberg, known as the iceberg #18 of Textbookomathea. That's right, question 18 from the math textbook. Now, here's the question in it's full form for all you folks out there.

One ninth of the height of an iceberg was above the surface of the water. The iceberg extended to a depth of 75.8 m below the surface. What was the height of the iceberg above the surface? Express your answer to the nearest tenth of a metre.

Quite a mouthful, huh? Well, the question is far simpler than it seems. First, let's use a picture to help us visualize this iceberg.

Nice iceberg, isn't it? Well, now that we can see it, let's see what we know about it. We know that the height of the iceberg below the water was 75.8 m. We also know that one ninth of the iceberg is above the water. This means that the other eight ninths of it are below the water. And, as I said before, the height of that is 75.8 m.

Now, how exactly do we find the height of the iceberg that is above the water? Well, we need to simply divide 75.8 m by 8. Why you may ask? The answer is that 8 ninths divided by 8 is 1 ninth, also known as the height of the iceberg above the water.

So, plug that into your calculator and you get a height of 9.48 m. However, we must round up to the nearest tenth, which gives us 9.5 m. Finally, since this is a word problem afterall, we have to answer the question in a sentence.

The height of the iceberg above the surface is 9.5 m.

There you have it everyone. A simple answer for a question that is simple, but doesn't seem that way at first. Thank you, and have a good night (or day...or afternoon...or evening)