Question

Lacey's favorite brand of cereal comes in a 20-ounce box. The manufacturer of thecereal requires a tolerance of 0.5 ounces--that is, as long as the box of cereal is within0.5 ounces of 20 ounces, the box can be sent to the store to be soldWrite an absolute value inequality that describes the acceptable weights, w, of a 20-ounce box of cereal. Explain how you came up with your inequality,

Answer 1

For this case we can solve the problem with the following structure:

$\left|Actual-Ideal\right|\leq tolerance$

The actual weight is x

The ideal weight is 20

And the tolerance is 0.5

So then our solution would be:

$\left|x-20\right|\leq0.5$

And we can rewrite the algebraic model on this way:

$-0.5\leq x-20\leq0.5$

Adding 20 in all the sides of the inequality we got:

$19.5\leq x\leq20.5$