Alex's dog has a tail that is 5 1/4 inches long. on a ruler, what inch marks are closest to 5 1/4 inches? name two inch marks.

A typical ruler will, of course, have the number 0-12.
On the ruler, there are different markings between the numbers indicating the exact distance such as 1 1/2 inches or 1 3/4 inches.
Here we see the mark on the rule would be 5 1/4 inches. So this would be between the 5 and 6 mark, before the 5 1/2 mark, and after the 5 mark on the ruler. So we see here that it would be closest to the inch mark of 5 and the next closest inch mark to 5 1/4 would be 6.