5. A cooler contains 5 gallons of water.

a. One bottle of water is [tex]\frac{1}{8}[/tex] of a gallon. How many bottles of water does the cooler contain? Explain or show your reasoning.



Answer :

To tackle this question, we need to determine how many 1/8-gallon bottles can be filled from a cooler containing 5 gallons of water. Let’s break it down step by step:

1. Understand the Volume Measurements:
- The total amount of water in the cooler is 5 gallons.
- The volume of one bottle of water is 1/8 of a gallon.

2. Convert the Bottle Volume:
- We know that 1 bottle = 1/8 gallon.

3. Calculate the Number of Bottles:
- To find out how many bottles the cooler can contain, we divide the total volume of water by the volume of one bottle.
- This can be expressed mathematically as:
[tex]\[ \text{Number of bottles} = \frac{\text{Total volume of water in the cooler}}{\text{Volume of one bottle}} \][/tex]
- Plugging in the numbers, we get:
[tex]\[ \text{Number of bottles} = \frac{5 \text{ gallons}}{\frac{1}{8} \text{ gallon/bottle}} \][/tex]

4. Perform the Division:
- Dividing by a fraction is the same as multiplying by its reciprocal. The reciprocal of 1/8 is 8.
[tex]\[ \frac{5}{\frac{1}{8}} = 5 \times 8 = 40 \][/tex]

5. Interpret the Result:
- Therefore, the cooler can contain 40 bottles of water, each bottle being 1/8 of a gallon.

So, in summary, since each bottle holds 1/8 gallon of water and the cooler contains 5 gallons, dividing 5 by 1/8 tells us that the cooler can hold a total of 40 bottles of water.