Question

You are the supervisor in a car assembly plant where each car produced requires one body and four wheels. You discover that the plant has bodies and wheels. How many cars can be made from this inventory? (How does this problem fit in with the law of definite proportions?)

Answer 1

Answer & Procedure

Given the problem, you can produce cars as long as you have 1 body and 4 wheels. If one part is missing, either the body or a wheel, you will not be able to produce the car. This relates to the law of definite proportions, which states that a given chemical compound always contains the same elements in the same proportions by mass. For example, pure water contains 11.19% hydrogen and 88.81% oxygen by mass. It does not matter where the sample of water came from or how it was prepared. Thus, the car will contain 1 body and 4 wheels.