Nate is helping to redesign his basement. He is in charge of choosing and buying the paint. He wants a specific shade of green, so he is going to combine blue and yellow paint in the ratio of 1:3 . If he needs 8 gallons of paint, how much yellow paint does he need to buy?

Answer 1

To determine how much yellow paint Nate needs to buy, we need to first understand the ratio of blue to yellow paint he aims to use, which is 1:3. This means for every 1 part of blue paint, there are 3 parts of yellow paint.

The total parts in the ratio is: \[ 1 \text{ (blue)} + 3 \text{ (yellow)} = 4 \text{ parts} \]

Nate needs a total of 8 gallons of paint. To find out how much each part represents in gallons, we divide the total gallons by the total parts: \[ \text{Gallons per part} = \frac{8 \text{ gallons}}{4 \text{ parts}} = 2 \text{ gallons per part} \]

Now, we can calculate the amount of yellow paint needed. Since yellow paint represents 3 parts of the total ratio: \[ \text{Yellow paint} = 3 \text{ parts} \times 2 \text{ gallons per part} = 6 \text{ gallons} \]

Therefore, Nate needs to buy 6 gallons of yellow paint.