Thread: Adding feet and inches.

How to add
Q1: 10' feets + 4 1/2" inches + 5 2/3" inches
Q2: 5' feets + 20' feets + 5 2/3" inches

Are you having trouble with adding fractions, with unit conversion, or with something else? Show us what you've done and where you're getting stuck.

could some one show me the steps of a solution

Originally Posted by tmbt

could some one show me the steps of a solution

Please answer the questions raised in post #2. Thankyou.

I'm having trouble with adding fractions, with unit conversion.

To add fractions, you get a common denominator. To add measurements with different units you get common units.

Q1: 10' feets + 4 1/2" inches + 5 2/3" inches

I recommend you change every thing to feet: 10' is 120 inches so this is
120+ 4 1/2+ 5 2/3.

Now since one denominator is 2 and the other 3 (and you get equivalent fractions by multiplying numerator and denominator by the same thing) the "common denominator" is 2*3= 6. If you multiply numerator and denominator of 1/2 by 3, you get 3/6. If you multiply numerator and denominator of 2/3 by 2 you get 4/6. 1/2+ 2/3= 3/6+4/6= 7/6= 1 1/6.

(English lesson: "feet" is already the plural of "foot"- you don't need the additional "s". In fact, the symbol ' after the number means feet and the symbol " after the number means inches- you don't need both.
Use either "10 feet + 4 1/2 inches + 5 2/3 inches" or "10'+ 4 1/2"+ 5 2/3" ".)