SOLUTION: On a fruit farm, an employee can pick a bushel and a half of apples from one and a half trees in an hour and a half. How many trees will the employee need to produce 12 bushels in

Hi, there--

The Problem:
On a fruit farm, an employee can pick a bushel and a half of apples from one and a half trees 
in an hour and a half. How many trees will the employee need to produce 12 bushels in 6 
hours?

A Solution:
We want to rewrite these relationships as unit rates so we can better see what's going on. 
A unit rate is the ratio of two measurements in which the second term is 1 (like "bushels per 
tree.")

One employee produces 1.5 bushels per 1.5 trees in an hour and a half. This is equivalent to 
saying that the employee produces 1 bushel per tree in an hour and a half.

A single hour is 2/3 of an hour and a half. So the employee can only produce 2/3 of a bushel 
of apples per tree for each hour he or she works.

The question we are trying to answer is "How many trees will an employee need to produce 12 
bushels in 6 hours. To answer the the question, we scale up using our unit rates.

With one tree the employee produces 2/3 of a bushel in one hour. Our employee will work for 
6 hours so that's (2/3)(6)=4 bushels per tree in 6 hours. 

Since every tree will produce 4 bushels by the end of 6 hours, the employee needs three trees 
to produce the 12 bushels.

Hope this helps! If the explanation seems unclear, or you still have questions about this, feel 
free to email me.

Mrs.Figgy
math.in.the.vortex@gmail.com