Question

Mike has under 1/4

of a tank of gas, and he decides to fill up his gas tank. His gas tank holds 16
gallons. The gas cost $3.59
per gallon.

Answer 1

To determine how much gas Mike needs to add and the total cost, let's follow these steps:

1. **Calculate the amount of gas Mike currently has:**
Since Mike has under 1/4 of a tank and his tank holds 16 gallons:
\[
\text{Gas currently in tank} = \text{Tank capacity} \times \frac{1}{4} = 16 \times \frac{1}{4} = 4 \text{ gallons}
\]
(Mike has slightly less than this amount.)

2. **Determine the amount he needs to fill his tank:**
To fill the tank, he needs to add gas until it reaches full capacity:
\[
\text{Amount needed to fill} = \text{Tank capacity} - \text{Gas currently in tank} = 16 - 4 = 12 \text{ gallons}
\]
(Since he has less than 4 gallons, he would need slightly more than this amount, but we will calculate based on the maximum he could fill.)

3. **Calculate the total cost to fill up the tank:**
The cost of gas is $3.59 per gallon:
\[
\text{Total cost} = \text{Amount needed} \times \text{Cost per gallon} = 12 \times 3.59 = 43.08
\]
(This is based on the assumption that he needs 12 gallons exactly to fill up.)

4. **Conclusion:**
If Mike fills his tank completely from having just under 1/4 of a tank, he will need to add a little more than 12 gallons of gas, which would cost him just over $43.08, depending on the exact amount of gas he had before.

If you know exactly how much gas Mike has, you can adjust the calculations to be more precise!