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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 6 3/8 gallons of coffee, was left with 3 7/8 gallons. How many gallons of coffee had been dispensed?

Write your answer as a fraction or as a whole or mixed number.

gallons

Answer 1

To find the amount of coffee that had been dispensed, we need to subtract the final amount of coffee from the initial amount.

The initial amount of coffee is 6 3/8 gallons.

The final amount of coffee is 3 7/8 gallons.

Let's subtract them:

6 3/8 - 3 7/8

To subtract the whole numbers, we have 6 - 3 = 3.

Next, let's subtract the fractions.

3/8 - 7/8 = (3 - 7) / 8 = -4/8 = -1/2 (the negative sign denotes that there was a decrease in coffee).

Combining the whole number and the fraction, we get:

3 1/2 gallons

Therefore, 3 1/2 gallons of coffee had been dispensed.

Answer 2

Wrong

Answer 3

Apologies for the mistake.

To find the amount of coffee that had been dispensed, we need to subtract the final amount of coffee from the initial amount.

The initial amount of coffee is 6 3/8 gallons.

The final amount of coffee is 3 7/8 gallons.

To subtract the fractions, we need to have a common denominator. In this case, the smallest common denominator is 8.

6 3/8 = (6 * 8 + 3) / 8 = 51/8 gallons

3 7/8 = (3 * 8 + 7) / 8 = 31/8 gallons

Now, let's subtract the final amount from the initial amount:

51/8 - 31/8 = (51 - 31) / 8 = 20/8 = 2 4/8 = 2 1/2 gallons

Therefore, 2 1/2 gallons of coffee had been dispensed.