Question

Duncan boils 6 cups of water in a teapot to make hot chocolate. He fills 4 mugs with 6 fluidounces of water each. How many cups of water are left in the teapot?Hint: There are 8 fluid ounces in 1 cup.

Answer 1

It is given that there are 6 cups of water in the teapot.

4 mugs were filled with 6 fluid ounces of water each.

It is required to find how many cups of water are left in the teapot.

To do this, find the number of cups of water that were poured into the mugs and then subtract from the total number of cups.

It is given that 6 fluid ounces of water were poured into 4 mugs, so the number of fluid ounces is the product:

`6*4=24\text{ fluid ounces}`

Convert this to cups of water as follows:

`\begin{gathered} 8\text{ fluid ounces }\equiv1\text{ cup} \\ \text{ Multiply both sides by }3: \\ \Rightarrow24\text{ fluid ounces }\equiv3\text{ cups} \end{gathered}`

It follows that 24 fluid ounces are equivalent to 3 cups of water.

This implies that 3 cups of water were poured into the mugs. Subtract this from the 6 cups in total:

`6\text{ cups}-3\text{ cups}=3\text{ cups}`

Hence, 3 cups are left in the teapot.

The answer is 3 cups.