Real-Life Math -- Solution
Here are the solutions:
1. With how much water are you going to mix the 5 gallons of vitamin (before putting it into the proportioner)?
1,800 / 100 = 18
The concentration the proportioner will give is 18 times too strong. So, for every 1 gallon of vitamin, you need to dilute it with 18 gallons of water.
5 x 18 = 90
You need to dilute the 5-gallon jug of vitamin with 90 gallons of water before you put it into the proportioner.
2. What is the total volume of medicated water you'll end up with?
90 x 100 + 5 = 9,005
You'll end up with 9,005 gallons of medicated water. Hope those chickens are thirsty!
Poultry farmers use math for problems like the one above. If you give an antibiotic and you get the proportion wrong, chickens will die, so math can be very important.
"You have to be able to do proportions," says poultry farmer Paul Karges. "It's not a real complex thing, but you've got to understand proportions or you'll end up giving them either twice as much or half as much as what they're supposed to [get]."
Poultry farmers also use math to see how their flocks are doing, especially if they work on a large farm. If the percentage of sick or dead chickens increases to abnormal levels, they need to know quickly so they can react.
Math is also useful when dealing with the finances of a farm. Poultry farmers on larger farms do less barn work and more office work, so they use math skills more often.
"Someone needs to have competency in high school math in order to feel comfortable with some of the determinations you have to make," Karges says.