Hey Jiskha! So I have a problem, my teacher told me that my answer was incorrect but I don't understand where I went wrong. Here's the problem. 3 cups of suagr weighs 3/4 pounds. Find the weight of 1 pound.
I believe you have to divide 3 cups of sugar by 3/4 pounds, to get 1 pound of sugar = 4 ibs (weight) but apparentally its incorrect. Please help!
I suspect there's a typo in your problem.
Find the weight of 1 pound.
1 pound = 1 pound
I agree with Mrs.Sue
You should say: 1 pound of sugar is 4 cups
So my teacher maybe misread my answer then? Also, Mrs. Sue your a legend! You too Simone!
To find the weight of 1 pound, you have correctly identified the unit conversion that needs to be performed. However, there seems to be a mistake in the calculation.
To convert 3 cups of sugar to pounds, you need to divide by the conversion factor, which is 3/4 pounds (since 3 cups weighs 3/4 pounds). So the correct calculation is:
3 cups / (3/4 pounds)
To divide by a fraction, you can multiply by the reciprocal of that fraction. In this case, the reciprocal of 3/4 is 4/3. So the calculation can be rewritten as:
3 cups * (4/3 pounds)
Now, we can simplify the expression by multiplying:
(3 * 4) cups / (1 * 3) pounds
This becomes:
12 cups / 3 pounds
And simplifying further, we get:
4 cups / 1 pound
So the weight of 1 pound of sugar is 4 cups, not 4 pounds as you previously mentioned.
Therefore, the correct answer to the problem is that 1 pound of sugar weighs 4 cups.