Real-Life Math
As a textile engineer, you come across math on a daily basis. Textile
engineer Chris Pastore uses math all the time. "And I love it!" he says. "Basic
arithmetic and algebra skills are required throughout the typical day for
calculations of things such as yarn size, number of yarns to use in a woven
or knitted structure, productivity of a machine, weight of a piece of fabric,
cost to produce a fabric and others."
One of the math tasks you are
required to do is convert from imperial measure to metric, and from metric
to imperial. "The textile industry has a wide variety of units. Not only do
we have to confront conversions from metric to imperial, but there are some
very unusual textile-specific units that the engineer needs to
convert," says Pastore.
You have ordered some yarn from an American
distributer. It is measured in imperial units. You need to convert that into
metric so that the workers at your plant in Canada can understand the amounts.
You
have received the following amounts of yarn:
560 yards of white yarn
432
yards of black yarn
50 spools of green yarn, with 100 feet on each spool
Using
the following conversions, figure the amounts of each color yarn in metric:
1
foot = 0.3048 meters
3 feet = 1 yard