Chemical Mixture Problems
Recently, I tutored a few students in math, and they were having the same problem: How to solve a chemical mixture equation? Chemical mixture problems can pretty much always be solved with the equation: p 1 (v 1 ) + p 2 (v 2 ) = p 3 (v 1 + v 2 ) , where "p" refers to the various percentages of the chemical involved and "v" refers to the various volumes of the chemical involved. The question should give either all three percentages as well as one volume, or both volumes as well as two percentages. When solving a problem such as this, it is unimportant whether the percentage is listed as a number such as 75, or a decimal, such as 0.75, as long as the same method is used throughout the problem. Here is a sample question below: A chemist needs 150 milliliters of a 50% saline solution but has only 18% and 78% solutions available. Find how many milliliters of each that should be mixed to get the desired solution. So, we can start equating variables wit
