Seawater is 5% salt. How much seawater do you need to get 17.25 lb of salt?

Answer 1

First, we need to determine how much salt is in one unit of seawater, which we'll call "x". If seawater is 5% salt, that means that for every 100 units of seawater, 5 units are salt. We can write this as:

5/100 = x/1

Simplifying this equation, we get:

0.05 = x

So one unit of seawater contains 0.05 lb of salt.

To find out how much seawater we need to get 17.25 lb of salt, we can set up a proportion. Let's call the amount of seawater we need "y":

0.05/1 = 17.25/y

Cross-multiplying, we get:

0.05y = 17.25

Dividing both sides by 0.05, we get:

y = 345

So we need 345 units of seawater to get 17.25 lb of salt.