Ferris Wheel Fun

The Giant Sky Wheel at the city fair has 20 gondolas, with each gondola able to seat 6 passengers. 

The wheel makes one complete rotation every 12 minutes, and passengers are loaded and unloaded without stopping the wheel.

If the Ferris wheel was full every rotation, how many people would have ridden the Giant Sky Wheel in 1 hour from the first rotation starting?

Justify your answer.

Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player...
Giant Sky Wheel 20 gondolas, 6 passengers each 1 rotation every 12 minutes

Solution

Let’s break this down step by step:

1. Calculate the capacity of the Ferris wheel:
– Number of gondolas: 20
– Passengers per gondola: 6
– Total capacity = 20 × 6 = 120 passengers per rotation

2. Calculate the number of rotations in 1 hour:
– Time for one rotation: 12 minutes
– Number of rotations in 1 hour = 60 minutes ÷ 12 minutes = 5 rotations

3. Calculate the total number of passengers in 1 hour:
– Passengers per rotation: 120
– Number of rotations: 5
– Total passengers = 120 × 5 = 600 passengers

Therefore, if the Ferris wheel was full every rotation, 600 people would have ridden the Giant Sky Wheel in 1 hour from the first rotation starting.

We can also present this information in a table:

RotationTime Elapsed (minutes)Total Passengers
112120
224240
336360
448480
560600

This table shows how the number of passengers accumulates over each rotation.

Capacity: 20 gondolas × 6 passengers = 120 passengers/rotation Rotations in 1 hour: 60 minutes ÷ 12 minutes = 5 rotations Time (minutes) Total Passengers 0 12 24 36 48 60 600 passengers Ferris Wheel Passengers Over Time