Mathematics
Mathematics
Problem
When the World Wide Web first became popular in the 1990s, download speeds reached a maximum of about 56 kilobits per second. Approximately how many minutes would the download of a 4.2-megabyte song have taken at that speed? (Note that there are 8000 kilobits in a megabyte.)Intuitive explanation
This is a unit conversion and rate problem—you need to figure out how long it takes to move a certain amount of data at a fixed speed. Convert the song size to kilobits using the given ratio, then divide by the speed (kilobits per second) to get time in seconds, and finally convert to minutes. The key is keeping track of units so they cancel cleanly.
Intuitive explanation
This is a unit conversion and rate problem—you need to figure out how long it takes to move a certain amount of data at a fixed speed. Convert the song size to kilobits using the given ratio, then divide by the speed (kilobits per second) to get time in seconds, and finally convert to minutes. The key is keeping track of units so they cancel cleanly.