Jenna was building a fence for her new sheep’s pen. She needs a total of 40 linear feet of lumber. Some of her neighbors have agreed to give her lumber, and she wants to know if she has enough. Neighbor Jim will give her a board that he says is 8 feet long. Neighbor Malia will give her two boards that she says are each 126 inches long. What is the total combined length of lumber Jenna has received?
+3453 Neighbor Malia has 126 inches of lumber, but the problem is we need to know how many feet of lumber this is!
To do this, we need to know how many inches are in a foot.
It turns out there are 12 inches in a foot, so $$126\div12$$ will tell us how many feet of lumber Malia has.
$$126\div12=10\frac{1}{2}$$
add this to the lumber Jim gave her, which is 8 feet.
$$10\frac{1}{2}+8 = 18\frac{1}{2}$$
So...Jenna won't have enough for her fence yet, but she does have $$18\frac{1}{2}$$ feet of lumber so far.
