Question

The amount of gas in the tanks of three lawn mowers is shown in the tablebelow. What is the total amount of gas in the three lawn mowers ? Describewhat you needed to do to find the answer as well as provide the totalamount ofgas.*Gas in Lawn MowersMower AMower BMower C2gallons38gallons3 gallons

Answer 1

The question requires us to add up the fractions to get our value of the total.

The steps to get that is stated below

`(2)/(3)+(3)/(8)+(2)/(8)`

To add up these fractions, we need to get the Lowest common Multiple to get a common denominator. I.e, a number that is the lowest number that 3 and 8 divide without remainder. This number is 3 x 8 = 24

`\begin{gathered} (2)/(3)\text{ becomes }(2*8)/(3*8)=(16)/(24) \\ (3)/(8)\text{ becomes}(3*3)/(3*3)=(9)/(24) \\ (2)/(8)\text{ becomes}(2*3)/(3*3)=(6)/(24) \end{gathered}`

Thus, we now have a common denominator for all the fractions and the numerators can now be added as:

`(2)/(3)+(3)/(8)+(2)/(8)=(16)/(24)+(9)/(24)+(6)/(24)=(16+9+6)/(24)=(31)/(24)\text{ gallons}`

In mixed fraction form, we have

`1(7)/(24)\text{ gallons}`

In decimal, we have 1.29 gallons