Question

A tourist visiting a city holds a map prepared at a scale of 1:25000. The tourist measures the distance between place A and place B in the city as 12.0 cm on the map. Assuming both the places are connected by a straight road, the distance (in km) the tourist needs to walk from A to B is __________ (rounded off to the nearest integer).

Hint:

Multiply the map distance by the scale factor 25000, then convert cm to km.

Answer 1

Correct Answer: 3

Step 1: Understand what the map scale means.
A scale of 1:25000 means that 1 unit of length measured on the map represents 25000 of the same units on the actual ground.

Step 2: Set up the conversion for the measured distance.
The tourist measures 12.0 cm on the map, so the actual ground distance in cm is
\[ \text{Ground distance} = 12.0 \text{ cm} \times 25000 = 300000 \text{ cm} \]

Step 3: Convert centimetres to kilometres.
There are 100 cm in a metre and 1000 m in a kilometre, so 1 km = 100000 cm.
\[ \text{Distance in km} = \frac{300000 \text{ cm}}{100000 \text{ cm/km}} = 3 \text{ km} \]

Final Answer:
Since the road connecting A and B is straight, the actual walking distance equals this ground distance.
\[ \boxed{3 \text{ km}} \]