Question

baker has 15 cups of flour he sets aside four cups of flour and use the rest for a cookie recipe that calls for 1/2 cup of flour how many batches of cookies can a baker make

Answer 1

From the information given in the statement, you know that the baker is going to use 11 cups to prepare his cookies, because

`15\text{ cups of flour}-4\text{ cups of flour set aside }=11\text{ cups of flour}`

Now, to find out how many batches of cookies the baker can make with 11 cups of flour, you can use the following ratio:

`\begin{gathered} \frac{1\text{ batch}}{(1)/(2)\text{ cup of flour}}=\frac{x\text{ batches}}{11\text{ cups of flour}} \\ \text{ Multiply by 11 cups of flour on both sides of the equation} \\ \frac{1\text{ batch}}{(1)/(2)\text{ cup of flour}}\cdot\text{11 cups of flour}=\frac{x\text{ batches}}{11\text{ cups of flour}}\cdot\text{11 cups of flour} \\ \frac{1\text{ batch}\cdot11\text{ cups of flour}}{(1)/(2)\text{ cup of flour}}=x \\ (1\cdot11)/((1)/(2))\text{ batches }=x \\ (11)/((1)/(2))\text{ batches = x} \end{gathered}`

Since

`11=(11)/(1)`

then when dividing the fractions you have

`\begin{gathered} (11)/((1)/(2))\text{batches }=x \\ ((11)/(1))/((1)/(2))\text{batches }=x \\ (11\cdot2)/(1\cdot1)\text{batches }=x \\ (22)/(1)\text{batches }=x \\ 22\text{batches }=x \end{gathered}`

Therefore, the baker can make 22 cookie batches with 11 cups of flour.