maths conversation help

Soldato
Joined
11 Oct 2005
Posts
5,702
Location
Derbyshire
my brain isn't working well this morning.

Any answers to this

I have 1500ml of 50:1 fuel. I need to convert this to 40:1

I have worked out that I need to add 7.5ml of oil but need confirmation.

Thanks
 
Caporegime
Joined
5 Sep 2010
Posts
25,572
Your 50:1 fuel already contains 30ml of oil (1500/50).

For 40:1 you need 37.5ml of oil (1500/40).

An additional 7.5ml of oil is required.
 
Soldato
Joined
25 Jul 2010
Posts
4,077
Location
Worcestershire
Your 50:1 fuel is made up of 1470.6 ml of fuel and 29.41ml oil.

To get to 40:1, you need 36.76ml of oil. This is an increase of 7.35ml.

There's a useful function in excel called goal seek. Find your original individual amounts by putting 1500ml total, with your amount of fuel equal to 1500ml minus the amount of oil. Then you set another cell as the ratio of fuel to oil, which in this case you want 50. So you use the goal seek function to tell the amount of oil cell to change in order to achieve 50 in the ratio cell. That tells you 1470.59ml of fuel and 29.41ml of oil.

Then you do it again, but you leave the amount of fuel the same, at 1470.59, and change your total to a formula of that plus amount of oil. You then goal seek on the oil amount to make the ratio cell 50, and the oil amount ends up as 36.76ml, which is an increase of 7.35ml.


The 30ml of oil asserted above gives a 1:49 ratio, and also doesn't account for the fact you have an increased overall volume once the oil is added. I'm splitting hairs I know.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Jun 2010
Posts
6,575
Location
Essex
You have 1500ml of 50:1
fuel = 1500/51*50 = 1470.58 ml
oil = 1500/51*1 = 29.41ml

To make it 40:1 the amount of fuel stays the same but the oil needs to be 1/40th the amount of fuel so:
fuel = 1470.58ml
oil = 1470.58/40 = 36.77 ml

So add 7.33 ml of oil. And you will have 1470.58ml of fuel + 36.77ml of oil = 1507.373ml of 40:1 fuel total.

Or just add 7.5ml and it'll probably be fine ;)
 
Soldato
Joined
25 Jul 2010
Posts
4,077
Location
Worcestershire
Yeah it's a common mistake that 50:1 means that the lesser of the two constituent parts makes up 1/50th of the total.

To take it to extremes, consider a 1:1 mix, each one is a half. 1/(1+1) = 1/2

So for 50:1, it's 1/(50+1).
 
Back
Top Bottom