SOLUTION: A recipe for chocolate requires a 5:4 ratio of cocoa beans to milk. How many gallons of milk must be purchased if you are using 80 pounds of cocoa beans?

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Question 1019332: A recipe for chocolate requires a 5:4 ratio of cocoa beans to milk. How many gallons of milk must be purchased if you are using 80 pounds of cocoa beans?
Answer by Theo(13342) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
the ratio of cocoa beans to milk is 5 to 4.

that's presumably 5 pounds of cocoa beans to 4 gallons of milk.

assuming that's true, then your ratio is c/m = 5/4.

c = number of pounds of cocoa beans.
m = gallons of milk.

if you have 80 pounds of cocoa beans, then c/m = 4/5 becomes:

80/m = 4/5

cross multiply to get 5m = 4*80.

this becomes 5m = 320.

divide both sides of this equation by 5 to get m = 64.

80 pounds of cocoa beans requires 64 gallons of milk.

the ratio of 80 / 64 can be simplified to 5/4 by dividing both numerator and denominator by 16.

you get (80/16) / (64/16) = 5/4.