In a bowl of salad there are 5/2 as many tomatoes as there are lettuce leaves.

a) write this as a ratio of tomatoes to lettuce leaves. Give your ratio in its simplest form.
b) there are 45 tomatoes on the salad bowl. How many lettuce leaves are there?

1 answer

a) The ratio of tomatoes to lettuce leaves is 5:2 (or 5/2 in fractional form). This ratio is already in its simplest form.

b) Let x be the number of lettuce leaves. We can set up a proportion:

5/2 = 45/x

To solve for x, we can cross-multiply:

5x = 90

x = 18

Therefore, there are 18 lettuce leaves in the salad bowl.