A soup kitchen makes 16 gallons of soup. Each day, a quarter of the soup is served and the rest is saved for the next day. Write the first five terms

sjeikdom0

sjeikdom0

Answered question

2021-03-08

A soup kitchen makes 16 gallons of soup. Each day, a quarter of the soup is served and the rest is saved for the next day. Write the first five terms of the sequence of the number of fluid ounces of soup left each day. Write an equation that represents the nth term of the sequence. When is all the soup gone?

Answer & Explanation

cyhuddwyr9

cyhuddwyr9

Skilled2021-03-09Added 90 answers

Since the soup kitchen starts with 16 gallons and there are 128 ounces in 1 gallon, then the first term of the sequence is a1=16(128)=2048.
Three-fourths of the soup is left after each day if only a quarter of the soup is served and the remainder is saved for the following day. The next terms in the sequence can then be found by multiplying each term by 34 to get the next term. The sequence's subsequent four terms are then:
a2=34a1=34(2048)=1536
a3=34a2=34(1536)=1152
a4=34a3=34(1152)=864
a5=34a4=34(864)=648
The sequence's first five terms are then 2048,1536,1152,864,648.
Since the terms have a common ratio of r=34, then the sequence is geometric. The formula for the nth term of a geometric sequence is an=a1rn1. Since a1=2048 and r=34, then the equation that represents the nth term of the sequence is an=2048(34)n1
To finish all of the soup, you would need an=0 for some value of n. Multiplying a number by 34 repeatedly will give a smaller and smaller number each time you multiply. The number will never equal 0 though, it will just get very close to 0. Therefore, the soup will never be gone.

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