Question

Rick's car gets 29.7 miles per gallon on the highway. If his fuel tank holds 10.45 gallons, then how far can he travel on one full tank of gas?

Answer 1

We will investigate how to use the mileage meter of a car to determine the amount of distance a car can travel per given fuel.

Mileage is a economic performance parameter of a car that gives the fuel economy. It is usually expressed as a ratio of:

`\text{Mileage = }\frac{Total\text{ Distance Travelled}}{Total\text{ Fuel consumed}}`

The mileage of a car is given as follows:

`\text{Mileage = 29.7 }(miles)/(gallon)`

We can say that this car can travel 29.7 miles per gallon on highway.

We now stop at the petrol station for re-fueling. We fuel up the car to:

`\text{Fuel = 10.45 gallons}`

We need to determine the distance that this car can travel for the amount of re-fueling. This is where we can use the mileage to determine the distance the car can travel as follows:

`\begin{gathered} \text{Distance = Mileage}\cdot Fuel \\ \end{gathered}`

Plug in the respective quantitites and solve for the distance that the car can travel as follows:

`\begin{gathered} \text{Distance = 29.7}(miles)/(gallon)\cdot10.45\text{ gallons} \\ \\ \textcolor{#FF7968}{Dis\tan ce}\text{\textcolor{#FF7968}{ = 310.365 miles}} \end{gathered}`

For the amount of re-fueling the distance travelled is 310.365 miles