Question

A certain shade of blue is made by mixing 1.5 quarts of blue paint with 5 quarts of white paint. If you need a total of 16.25 gallons of this shade of blue paint, how much of each color should you mix

Answer 1

its actually 13 1/3

Explanation:

Answer 2

Let
`b` be the amount (in quarts) of blue paint used in the mix, and
`w` the amount of white paint. For the desired shade, there are 1.5 qt of blue paint for every 5 qt of white, so that
`1.5b=5w\implies w=0.3b`.

1 gallon = 4 quarts, so 16.25 gal = 65 qt. We want this amount of the final mixed paint, so that
`b+w=65`.

Subsituting
`w=0.3b` into this equation gives us

`b+0.3b=1.3b=65\implies b=50`

so we need to use 50 qt of blue paint and 15 qt of white paint (since 65 - 50 = 15).