Question

You are preheating an oven to 350°F. The thermometer reads 346°F. The measured temperature has an absolute deviation of at most 2°F. Write and solve an inequality to decide if the oven is preheated yet.

Answer 1

The inequality to represent the acceptable preheat temperature range is 348°F ≤ 346°F ≤ 352°F. Since the current oven temperature of 346°F is below the minimum of this range, the oven has not preheated to the acceptable level.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student is asked to determine whether the oven has reached the preheated temperature considering an absolute deviation of at most 2°F from the target temperature of 350°F. The current temperature is 346°F. To solve this, we can write an inequality that represents the allowable range for the oven's temperature based on the given deviation.

The inequality can be expressed as:

Target Temperature - Absolute Deviation ≤ Actual Temperature ≤ Target Temperature + Absolute Deviation

So for this scenario:

350°F - 2°F ≤ 346°F ≤ 350°F + 2°F

Turning this into a numerical inequality gives us:

348°F ≤ 346°F ≤ 352°F

As we can see, the actual temperature of 346°F falls below the minimum acceptable temperature of 348°F. Therefore, the oven has not yet reached the acceptable preheated range.