In a bowl of salad there are 5/2 as many tomatoes as there are lettuce leaves.
a) write this as a ratio of tomatoes to lettuce leaves. Give your ratio in its simplest form.
b) there are 45 tomatoes on the salad bowl. How many lettuce leaves are there?
a) The ratio of tomatoes to lettuce leaves is 5:2 (or 5/2 in fractional form). This ratio is already in its simplest form.
b) Let x be the number of lettuce leaves. We can set up a proportion:
5/2 = 45/x
To solve for x, we can cross-multiply:
5x = 90
x = 18
Therefore, there are 18 lettuce leaves in the salad bowl.
To find the ratio of tomatoes to lettuce leaves, we can divide the number of tomatoes by the number of lettuce leaves.
a) Let's call the number of lettuce leaves "x". The number of tomatoes is given as 5/2 times the number of lettuce leaves. So the ratio of tomatoes to lettuce leaves is:
(5/2) * x : x
Simplifying this ratio, we can multiply both terms by 2 to get rid of the fraction:
(5/2) * 2x : x * 2
This simplifies to:
5x : 2x
So the simplified ratio of tomatoes to lettuce leaves is 5x : 2x.
b) We are given that there are 45 tomatoes in the salad bowl. Let's solve for the number of lettuce leaves (x):
Since the ratio of tomatoes to lettuce leaves is 5x : 2x, we can set up the following equation:
5x = 45
To solve for x, we divide both sides of the equation by 5:
x = 45 / 5
x = 9
Therefore, there are 9 lettuce leaves in the salad bowl.