Question

At the start of the trip, a car's gas tank contains 12 gallons of gasoline. During the trip. the car consumes, `10 1/8` gallons. How much gasoline is left in the tank at the end of the trip?

Answer 1

See a solution process below:

Explanation:

We can rewrite this question as:

What is `10 1/8` subtracted from `12`

First, convert the mixed number into an improper fraction:

`10 1/8 = 10 + 1/8 = (8/8 xx 10) + 1/8 = 80/8 + 1/8 = (80 + 1)/8 = 81/8`

To subtract fractions they must be over common denominators. We can rewrite `12` as:

`12 = 8/8 xx 12 = 96/8`

We can now write and evaluate the expression as:

`96/8 - 81/8 => (96 - 81)/8 = 15/8`

We can convert this to a mixed number as:

`15/8 = (8 + 7)/8 = 8/8 + 7/8 = 1 + 7/8 = 1 7/8`

There was `1 7/8` gallons of gas remaining at the end of the trip.