Question

A car repair shop offers its customers free coffee while they wait. By the end of the day, the

coffee urn, which had started out with 5 1/3 gallons of coffee, was left with 1 1/2 gallons.
How many gallons of coffee had been dispensed?
Write your answer as a fraction or as a whole or mixed number.

Answer 1

Rewrite the fractions to have a common denominator:

1/3 = 2/6

1/2 = 3/6

Now rewrite the full numbers as improper fraction:

5 2/6 = 32/6

1 3/6 = 9/6

Subtract:

32/6 - 9/6 = 23/6

Now rewrite as 3 5/6

Answer: 3 5/6