If a gallon of paint covers a 25.0 " m"^2 wall, what is the thickness of the paint?

1 Answer
Mar 25, 2016

The paint is 0.1512 millimeters thick.

Explanation:

If, instead of painting a wall, let's suppose we are pouring the paint into a box. We know the surface of the "floor" of this box would be 25.0 " m"^2 and have an unknown height of x " meters". So we need to solve the volume of this box as

V="area"xx"height"=25" m"^2*x " m"

Now, we were given a gallon of paint. Google told me that

1 " gal" = 3.78xx10^-3 " m"^3

So,

V=25 " m"^2*x " m"=3.78xx10^-3 " m"^3, dividing both sides by 25 gives the "height" (or thickness), x,

x=1.512xx10^-4 " m" = 0.1512 " mm"