Question

If a mother bear is fed 20 fish, how many fish would the cub get if the mother is fed 4 fish for every 2 fish that her cub is fed?

a) 10 fish
b) 15 fish
c) 20 fish
d) 25 fish

Answer 1

When the mother bear is fed 20 fish and the ratio of fish fed to the mother and cub is 2:1, the cub will be fed 10 fish. We find this by dividing 20 fish by the mother's part of the ratio and multiplying the result by the cub's part.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question involves finding out how many fish a cub would get based on a certain ratio of how the fish are shared between the mother bear and the cub. If the mother bear is fed 4 fish for every 2 fish that her cub is fed, we can simplify this ratio to 2:1, meaning the mother gets twice as many fish as the cub.To find out how many fish the cub gets when the mother is fed 20 fish, we set up the proportion based on the ratio. We have 4 fish for the mother and 2 fish for the cub as our ratio, which simplifies to 2 fish for the mother and 1 fish for the cub. If the mother gets 20 fish, we divide this amount by the mother's part of the ratio (2) to find out how many times the ratio fits into 20 fish:

20 fish (for the mother) ÷ 2 (mother's part of the ratio) = 10 times the ratio fits in

Since the cub gets 1 fish for every 2 fish the mother gets, the cub will be fed the number of times the ratio fits into 20 fish times the cub's part of the ratio:

10 (times the ratio fits in) × 1 fish (cub's part of the ratio) = 10 fish for the cub

So the cub gets 10 fish when the mother is fed 20 fish, hence the correct answer is (a) 10 fish.