Question

Sarah has a recipe that makes 48 cookies. The recipe calls for 2 1/3 cups of flour. However, Sarah wants to make 12 cookies. How many cups of flour does she need?

Answer 1

Sarah needs 7/12 cups of flour to make 12 cookies, by scaling down the original amount of flour needed for 48 cookies, which is 2 1/3 cups.

Step-by-step explanation:

To determine how many cups of flour Sarah needs to make 12 cookies instead of 48, we need to set up a proportion based on the original recipe. The original recipe, which makes 48 cookies, requires 2 1/3 cups of flour. To scale down the amount of flour for 12 cookies, we would do the following calculation:

1. Convert the mixed number to an improper fraction: 2 1/3 cups = (2 × 3 + 1)/3 = 7/3 cups.
2. Since Sarah wants to make one quarter of the original recipe (12 is one quarter of 48), we multiply the amount of flour by 1/4: (7/3) × 1/4 = 7/12 cups of flour.
3. Convert the improper fraction back to a mixed number, if needed: 7/12 cups of flour is the fraction we can use, or we can keep it as it is since it's already in terms of cups.

Therefore, Sarah needs 7/12 cups of flour to make 12 cookies.