Question #07a44

1 Answer
Jan 18, 2017

Here's what I got.

Explanation:

The problem tells you that the correct dosage is

"15 mg drug " -> " 1 kg"

and that the patient has a mass of "20 kg", so the first thing to do here is to calculate the total mass of drug that must be administered to the patient.

To do that, use the correct dosage as a conversion factor to take you from the mass of the patient to the mass of the drug

20 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("kg"))) * overbrace("15 mg drug"/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("kg")))))^(color(blue)("given by the problem")) = "300 mg drug"

Now, assuming that your solution contains "200 mg" of drug for every "5 cm"^3 of solution, you can use the given composition of the solution as conversion factor to take you from the mass of drug to the volume of the solution

300 color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mg drug"))) * ("5 cm"^2color(white)(.)"solution")/(200color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mg drug")))) = color(darkgreen)(ul(color(black)("7.5 cm"^2color(white)(.)"solution")))

I'll leave the answer rounded to two sig figs, but keep in mind that you only have one significant figure for your data.

SIDE NOTE If you only have "200 mg" of drug dissolved in "5 cm"^3 of solution, then you can't really administer the "300 g" of drug needed by the patient because you are "100 mg" of drug short.

This is why I assumed that the solution contains "200 mg" of drug for every "5 cm"^3 of solution.