Explanation for Question 12 From the Math (Calc) Section on the Official Sat Practice Test 9
Question 12 reads biologists found a new species of pale shrimp at the world's 2 deepest under sea vent. The Bebe vent field, 3 the vent is 3.1 miles below the sea surface. 4 Approximately how many kilometers below the sea surface is the vent. 5 All right, so this is another word problem. And this one, 6 if we just want to really quickly visualize what's happening, 7 we have the sea surface and then we have 8 the vent. So the surface is here and the vent is, 9 let's say right here. And it is 3.1 miles below. 10 All we're trying to do here is convert that 3.1 miles into kilometers. 11 So we can set this up as a story, 12 geometry problem, where we have 3.1 miles times, 13 there's one kilometer in 0.6, 14 2 1 4 miles. They give us that in the problem. 15 So to do a story geometry successfully, you have to make sure that your 16 units cancel out. So I'll put the miles on the bottom so that they 17 will cross out for this problem. Now I got one kilometer 18 and I'll abbreviate that to Kam. And then that's all you need to do. 19 You do 3.1 times one over 0.62, 20 which is the same thing as 3.1 divided by 0.6214. 21 And we get 4.988, 22 which is essentially equal to five. 23 And that will be our answer for question 12.