Question

A doctor's prescription calls for 1/5 of an ounce of a particular ingredient for every 20 pounds of body weight. How many ounces of the ingredient would be needed by somebody weighing 175 pounds?

Answer 1

1.75 ounces of medicine

Explanation:

Let's divide how much the patient weighs, 175 pounds, by 20 pounds, or the amount that decides the amount of medicine a patient receives:

`175/20=8.75`

So we need 8.75 units of the medicine. Each unit is `1/5=0.2` of an ounce. This means that we need:

`8.75xx0.2=1.75` ounces of medicine