ratio/proportion

Question

A patient said her doctor recommended taking 1.5g of psyllium fiber capsules daily. If the capsules contain 500 mg of each psyllium in each one, how many should she take each day?

Answer 1

Hi Emily, there are several ways to work this problem. First, you need to know how many milligrams to one gram. There are a lot of conversion tables on the internet, which will give you this ratio.

 

1 gram = 1000 milligrams.

 

The proportion you need to solve is:

 

500  / 1000  = 1.5 / x

 

Cross multiply to get:

 

500 * x = 1.5 * 1000

 

Divide both sides by 500 gives:

 

x = (1.5 * 1000) / 500

 

x = 3, or the patient needs to take 3 of the 500 mg capsules to get the 1.5 g she needs each day.

 

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