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| Question 367546:  10 liters of a 30% acid solution is obtained by mixing 20% solution with a 50% solution.
 a) write a system of equations in which one equation represents the amount of final mixture required and the other represents the amount of the acid in the final mixture.  Let x and y represent the amounts of 20% and 50% solutions, respectively.
 b) use a graphing utility to graph the two equations in part a.  As the amount of the 20% solution increases, how does the amount of the 50% solution change?
 c) How much of each solution is required to obtain the specified concentration in the final mixture?
 
 Answer by Theo(13342)
      (Show Source): 
You can put this solution on YOUR website! x is the amount of liters of the 20% solution. y is the amount of liters of the 50% solution.
 
 your 2 equations are:
 
 x + y = 10 (number of liters in the solution)
 
 .2x + .5y = .3*10 (amount of acid in the solution).
 
 you solve these simultaneously as follows:
 
 from the first equation, solve for y to get:
 
 y = 10 - x
 
 substitute for y in the second equation to get:
 
 .2*x + .5*(10-x) = .3*10
 
 simplify to get:
 
 .2*x + 5 - .5*x = 3
 
 combine like terms to get -.3*x + 5 = 3
 
 subtract 5 from both sides of the first equation to get:
 
 -.3*x = -2
 
 divide both sides of the equation by -.3 to get:
 
 x = 6.6666666667 (equivalent to 6 and 2/3)
 
 since x + y = 10, this means that y = 3.333333333 (equivalent to 3 and 1/3)
 
 substitute in your original equations to get:
 
 x + y = 6.6666666667 + 3.3333333333 = 10
 
 .2*x + .5*y = .2 * (6.6666666667) + .5 * (3.3333333333) = 3
 
 your solution to the problem is that you need 6 and 2/3 liters of the 20% solution and 3 and 1/3 liters of the 50% solution to get a solution of 10 liters that is 30% acid.
 
 to graph this problem, you need to do the following:
 
 Let x = the number of liters of the 20% solution.
 
 Let y = .2*x + .5*(10-x) which equals the amount of acid in 10 liters of the final solution.
 
 the graph will look like this:
 
 
   
 The domain of your graph is the value of x from 0 to 10.
 
 The range of your graph is the value of y from 5 to 2.
 
 you need to look only at the values of x from 0 to 10.
 
 It's clear that when x = 0, y = 5.
 
 That's because your mix is .2*0 + .5*10
 
 It's also clear that when x = 10, y = 2
 
 That's because your mix is .2*10 + .5*0
 
 It is a little less clear that when the value of x = 6.6666666667, the value of y is equal to 3.
 
 It's a little less clear because you can't really narrow the graph down to the value of x = 6.66666667.
 
 You can, however, determine the value of y from the equation for y.
 
 The equation is:
 
 y = .2*x + .5*(10-x)
 
 That becomes:
 
 y = .2*6.666666667 + .5 * (10-6.666666667)
 
 The result of that calculation is that y = 3.
 
 The graph above showed you what happens to the amount of acid in the 10 liters of total solution as the number of liters of the 20% solution increases.
 
 The following graph shows you what happens to the number of liters of 50% solution as the number of liters of the 20% solution increases.
 
 In this graph, the value of x is the number of liters of 20% solution and the value of y is the number of liters of 50% solution.
 
 The formula for y is y = 10 - x.
 
 as x increases, the value of y decreases.
 
 That graph looks like this:
 
 
   
 You can see that when the amount of the 20% solution is increased, the amount of the 50% solution decreases.
 
 x is the amount of 20% solution.
 y is the amount of 50% solution.
 
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