# Question 392bf

Sep 24, 2015

$8$ tablets.

#### Explanation:

The idea here is that you know how much tetracycline the patient must take every six hours, and that you have some stock tablets that contain $\text{500 mg}$ of tetracycline each.

The first thing that you need to determine is how many tablets will you need to provide $\text{1.0 g}$ of tetracycline.

To do that, first convert the amount of tetracycline each tablet contains from miligrams to grams

500color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mg"))) * (10^(-3)"g")/(1color(red)(cancel(color(black)("mg")))) = "0.5 g"

This means that you need to give your patient

1.0color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g tetracycline"))) * "1 tablet"/(0.5color(red)(cancel(color(black)("g tetracycline")))) = "2 tablets"

every six hours in order to get the correct dosage per day.

If you take into account the fact that one day has 24 hours, the total number of tablets you must have on hand is

24color(red)(cancel(color(black)("hr"))) * "2 tablets"/(6color(red)(cancel(color(black)("hr")))) = color(green)("8 tablets")#

Give your patient a total of eight $\text{500-mg}$ tablets every day.