Mr. Bloop has an old junk pile behind his barn. It contains all kinds of metal pieces he uses to buil his inventions. In the pile the ration of alluminun to steel pieces is 3 to 2. If there are 286 toatal obejcts in the pile, how many of them are made of steel?

Question

Mr. Bloop has an old junk pile behind his barn.  It contains all kinds of metal pieces he uses to buil his inventions.  In the pile the ration of alluminun to steel pieces is 3 to 2.  If there are 286 toatal obejcts in the pile, how many of them are made of steel?

anonymous · Answer

so 3 times a quantity + 2 times a quantity = 286. if we add those multiples together we have five times a quantity = 286. By dividing by five we get what the value of a single part of the ratio would be. it equals 57.2 pieces. Now by mulitplying that ratio factor by two we get what the value of steel pieces which are in that pile. Of course you can't have a decimal part of a metal piece in reality generally speaking, but mathematically it turns out that 114.4 pieces are steel in this case. This means that if this were a real life situation, the total sume of parts was wrong or their ratio was. I mention that only to get you to internalize the information you find, and what is given to you, so when you approach real life quantities and data interactions, you get a stronger feel for what you are looking at.