Grading Labs

Problem Statement

I spend around ten minutes grading a single student’s lab report. If I have 30 students this semester and we do 15 labs over the semester, how many minutes will I spend grading lab reports?

I Need a Hint!

Set up an expression where you take the number of students, convert that to the number of labs, and then convert that to the number of minutes grading labs. This is an example of dimensional analysis.

Solution

We can solve this problem using dimensional analysis. The number of minutes grading labs is:

$$(30students)\left(\frac{15labs}{1student}\right)\left(\frac{10minutes}{1lab}\right)=4500minutes$$