Thread: Word Problem

The day you begin to store a watermelon in your basement it weighs 10 pounds and is 99% water. You forget about it for a while and when you bring it up from the basement, it is 98% water. What does it weigh?



Please Help!

At first, you had 99% water. So, you had 10 x 99% = 9.9 mass of water and 0.1 dry mass.

The dry mass is always constant.

Then, you have 98% weight water. This means that the 2% is dry mass, and is equal to 0.1.

Find for 100%, using proportions.

Post your answer!

its solid content is 1%of 10pounds = 0.1pound
The new weight, W, is such that the solid content represents 2% (100-98) but is still 0.1pound
so, 0.1= 0.02*W
thus W=0.1/0.02=5 pounds