Question

If an athlete weighs 131lb and has 15.0% body fat by weight, how many pounds of fat does the athlete's body contain?

Answer 1

See a solution process below:

Explanation:

We can rewrite this problem as:

What is 15.0% of 131"lb"?

"Percent" or "%" means "out of 100" or "per 100", Therefore 15.0% can be written as `15/100`.

When dealing with percents the word "of" means "times" or "to multiply".

Finally, lets call the the number of pounds of body fat we are looking for "f".

Putting this altogether we can write this equation and solve for `f` while keeping the equation balanced:

`f = 15/100 xx 131`

`f = 1965/100`

`f = 19.65`

The athlete has 19.65 lb of body fat.