What is 15 percent of 32000?

Answer 1

To understand this kind of problem, a story is in order. I am sure y'all have seen a chemical balance in the chemistry or physics lab. It has two pans and to weigh something you put the object in one pan and add weights on the other so that the balance beam is perfectly horizontal as indicated by the pointer pointing to zero on the graduated scale in the middle of the balance.

I have two chunks of beef that are identical in weight. I divide one of them into 100 equal parts and put 15 parts on one pan. I cut the other chunk of beef into 32000 equal parts. I start putting one piece at a time out of the 32000 pieces on the other pan. I am not really interested in knowing the actual weight of the beef pieces in either of the two pans. I just want to know how many of the 32000d pieces will balance the 15 pieces (of the 100 pieces). The answer may not always be a whole number of pieces from the 32000 piece collection. It may be a certain number of whole pieces out of the 32000 piece collection and possibly a part of an extra piece. I recognize that. If it turns out to be a whole number of pieces, that will be good but cannot count on it. Mathematically we want to solve for "N" in the equation

(15/100) = (N/32000)

which means N = (15 x 32000)/100 = 15 x 320 = 4800.

Hence 15% of 32000 is 4800, the same as saying that we would need 4800 pieces from the 32000 piece collection to equal in weight 15 pieces from the 100 piece collection.

That's one way of looking at percentages