Question

James is preparing three solutions of salt water. Each of the solutions has the same amount of water in the beaker and a different amounts of salt. In the first beaker, there is one scoop of salt in the beaker. The second beaker has two scoops of salt. The third beaker has three scoops of salt. Which of the beakers is the most dilute solution?

Answer 1

The first one, The less of a substance like salt there is the more diluted the substance but the more there is the more concentrated the substance is

Answer 2

WARNING: The following answer is a complete guess.


The definition of dilute is "make (a liquid) thinner or weaker by adding water or another solvent to it." Now, this may make you think that the beaker with three scoops is the most dilute, but it's not. In this case, it depends on the salt to water ratio. Let's say each beaker contains five parts water. The first beaker has a ratio of 1/5. The second had a ratio of 2/5. The third has a ratio of 3/5. To find which has the most water compared to the others, I'll use equal to make the numerator (The amount of salt) seemingly equal each time. Just a warning, this strategy doesn't work every time. Now, if we make the numerators the same, that means which ever denominator is the highest will be the most dilute solution. Let's make each numerator equal to six, as each number (1, 2, and 3) go into six.

1/5 = 6/30
2/5 = 6/15
3/5 = 6/12

I got these numbers by dividing six (What we want the numerator to be) by each current numerator, and then multiplying the quotient (The answer of a division problem) by both sides of the fraction. Since the first beaker has the highest denominator, we know that it is the most dilute.