Real-Life Math
You work as an aircraft painter. It is 8 a.m. and this is your first
day on the job. You put on your smock and enter the maintenance airplane hanger
where all of the planes are kept for repairs.
You meet the foreman,
Joe. Joe says you will be painting the interior storage area of an old 747
jumbo jet that has just come back from a flight over the Atlantic Ocean. As
you inspect the area, you notice that the interior storage is all scratched
up from the loading and unloading of the silver storage containers.
The
maintenance people have already done a good job of cleaning the area with
water and aircraft-cleaning soap. Now it is your turn. You need to start by
mixing your paint. This is trickier than it seems. "Different parts of the
plane need to meet different content or measurement specifications," says
Joe Dough, an aircraft painter.
"While mixing the paint, often the
calculation of time is important," adds Dough. "One solution cannot be mixed
into the mixture until a certain elapse of time. There are occasions when
you have to use the paint, or add in a certain content within a certain time
frame."
Painters must follow procedures or results outlined in the
aircraft processing manual to complete their job to certain specifications.
You flip through your painter's guideline book to double-check the formula
for the paint and the specifications outlined by the company. The
formula for the paint used for the aircraft's interior storage area reads
as follows:
| Paint | 420 pints |
| V66-29 Catalyst | 480 pints |
| R7KB29 Reducer | 720 pints |
This formula will only cover 1 storage area, however.
You need to paint 3 storage areas today. As well, your partner, who is responsible
for stirring, doesn't understand pints and needs you to convert your
results to liters. (1 pint = 0.473 liters)