Question

Recall the pancake recipe: 1 cup flour + 2 eggs + ½ tsp baking powder → 5 pancakes Suppose there are 5 cups of flour, 12 eggs, and 4 tsp. of baking powder. How many pancakes can be made?

Answer 1

25 pancakes can be made.

Step-by-step explanation:

This is a question based on the concept on of limiting reagent or limiting factor.

The pancakes can be kept on making till one of the item gets exhausted.

Let's, check which item gets exhausted first-

5 cups of flours are sufficient for making-
`(5)/(1)` × 5 ie. 25 pancakes considering we have 5×2 ie. 10 eggs and 5×1/2 ie. e 2.5 tsp of baking powder.

We can see that, we have all the required material needed and only the flour gets exhausted first.

But, still for our satisfaction we can check once, 12 eggs will make
`(12)/(2)` × 5 ie. 30 pancakes, but we don't have flour for 30 of them.

Similarly, 4 tsp of baking powder will yield 40 pancakes but we neither have enough flour nor we have enough eggs for it.

Therefore, the maximum number of pancakes that can be made are is 25.