Question

The first container of milk contains twice as much milk as the second container. After John uses 2 gallons of milk from the second container. After John uses 2 gallons of milk from the second container and three gallons of milk from the first container, the first container has 4.5 times as much milk as the second. How Many gallons of milk were in each container originally?

Answer 1

Let's denote:

- x as the initial amount of milk in the second container

- 2x as the initial amount of milk in the first container (since it contains twice as much milk as the second)

According to the problem, after John uses 2 gallons of milk from the second container and 3 gallons from the first one, the first container has 4.5 times as much milk as the second. This gives us the following equation:

(2x - 3) = 4.5 * (x - 2)

Let's solve this equation.

Expanding the right side of the equation gives:

2x - 3 = 4.5x - 9

Subtracting 2x from both sides gives:

-3 = 2.5x - 9

Adding 9 to both sides gives:

6 = 2.5x

Finally, dividing both sides by 2.5 gives:

x = 6 / 2.5

x = 2.4 gallons

So the second container originally contained 2.4 gallons of milk.

Since the first container originally contained twice as much milk as the second, it contained 2 * 2.4 = 4.8 gallons of milk.