The MSC Fabiola is the largest ship to ever enter San Francisco Bay. It carries 12,500 containers, which if placed end-to-end would stretch about 75 km. Roughly what is the length of one container? Here we need to divide the total length, 75 km, by the number of containers, 12,500. So the containers, all 12,500 of them, span or stretch to the length of 75 km, and that is equal to 75,000 meters. We change to meters because the answers are given in meters. And then what we need to do is divide, 75,000 divided by the number of containers, 12,500. We can cancel some zeros on both sides to make the work a little manageable, and so this is equal to 75,750 divided by 125. And then we have to estimate. So we can see that 5 times 125 is equal to 500 plus 125, which gives us 625, so that's not quite what we need. 6 times that would be the previous answer, 625 plus 125, and that gives us 750. So that's right on the spot, and that tells us that each container is roughly, because we're just looking for an estimate, 6 meters long. And that gives us choice A, 6 meters.

MSC Fabiola

San Francisco Bay

largest ship

container length

calculation