Let’s get going with conversions. Converting inches to a decimal feet number is a common practice in ship rigging. We can see from the yellow ruler that 1 foot is made up of 12 inches. So each inch can be written as a fraction of a foot. For example, one inch can be written as a fraction of a foot which is made of 12 inches, by indicating that it is 1 inch of 12 , or 1 over 12
by performing the division 1 over 12 we get a decimal number, in this case zero point zero eight three feet which is the decimal feet equivalent to 1 inch
As illustrated in the table below we can see that any inch can be converted to decimal feet by following the same procedure. We can also observe that the decimal number is rounded to the closest one hundredth. The rounding of decimals will be covered on our Rounding decimals lesson.
One foot of length is made of 12, 1-inch segments. So, we could write each inch segment of the foot as a fraction of a foot as follows:
