Determine the unit rate for the following problems : he pumped 54 gallons in 12 minutes

To find the unit rate, we are essentially going to reduce this ratio down to it's lowest possible terms. So in this case, we are going to find how many gallons are pumped every 1 minute.

To do this, we are going to divide 54 by 12:

So now that we have this in such terms, we can call it a unit rate. Therefore, the unit rate is 4.5 gallons/min.

step-by-step explanation:

12: 00 p.m. to 7: 00 p.m. is a total of 7 hours.

4: 00 p.m. to 7: 00 p.m. is a total of 3 hours.

this means that from 4: 00 p.m to 7: 00 p.m. this represents 3/7 of what was lost from 12: 00 p.m. to 7: 00 p.m.

after knowing this, after doing 11,600 - 6,800 = 4,800

4,800 represents 3/7 of what was lost for 7 hours.

we then divide 4,800 by 3 which gets 1,600.

because we know that 1,600 represents 1/7 of how much water was lost, we just have to multiply by 7, which gets 11,200.   after adding 11,200 to how much water was left at 7: 00 p.m. which was 6,800. 11,200 + 6,800 = 18,000

this means that the pool originally had 18,000 gallons in the pool.

you can also check your work by doing 18,000 - 4(1600), which becomes           1800 - 6400 which gets you 11,600.