Water is flowing out of an artesian spring at a rate of 8 cubic feet per minute. There are 7.5 gallons of water per cubic foot. How many minutes will it take for the water to fill up a 300 gallon tank?

2 Answers
Oct 24, 2016

It will take 5 minutes to fill the tank.

Explanation:

As the water is flowing out of the artesian spring at a rate of 8 cubic feet per minute and each cubic foot has 7.5 gallons

the water is flowing out of the artesian spring at a rate of 8xx7.5=60 gallons per minute.

As the tank can fill up 300 gallon,

it should take 300/60=5 minutes to fill tank.

Oct 28, 2016

The time taken for 300 gallons is 5 minutes

color(green)("Takes longer to explain that to do the calculation")

Explanation:

color(blue)("Building the conversion")

you can manipulate units of measurement the same way you do the numbers.

Let cubic feet per minute be " "(ft^3)/min

Let gallons of water per cubic foot be " "g/(ft^3)

So " "(ft^3)/minxxg/(ft^3)" " ->" "(cancel(ft^3))/(cancel(ft^3))xxg/(min)

color(green)("From this observe that multiplying these together give you gallons")color(green)("per minute."ul(" Associating this with the numbers gives:"))

=>8 (ft^3)/("min") xx 7.5 g/(ft^3)" " =" " (8xx7.5) g/("min")" "=" "60 g/("min")

'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
color(blue)("Determine the time for 300 gallons")

Using ratio in fraction form

(60g)/(1 "min") -=(300g)/("time")

Turn the whole thing upside down

(1 "min")/(60g)-=("time")/(300g)

By example, using the same principle as 1/2 is the same as 2/4
Multiply by 1 and you do not change the overall value. However, 1 comes in many forms.

color(green)([(1 "min")/(60g)color(red)(xx1)]-=("time")/(300g)" "->" " [(1 "min")/(60g)color(red)(xx5/5)]-=("time")/(300g))

=(5" min")/(300 g)

The time taken for 300 gallons is 5 minutes