A student spent 15 minutes getting a 2-foot by 3-foot bulletin board. To the nearest tenth of a minute, how long did it take the student to paint 1 square foot?

The student took 2.5 minutes to paint 1 square foot.

Step-by-step explanation:

In order to know how long the student took to paint each square foot we first need to know the total area of the bulletin board. Since it is a rectangle we can compute it's area by multiplying the width and the height. That is:

area = 2*3 = 6 square foot

Since the student took 15 minutes to paint the whole board the pace at which he was working can be calculated by dividing the total area of the board by the time he took to paint all of it. So we have:

pace = 6/15 = 0.4 foot/min

To find how long it took him to paint 1 square foot we can divide it by the pace he was painting. We have:

time = 1/0.4 = 2.5 minutes

The student took 2.5 minutes to paint 1 square foot.