About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Fuel Mixture Quiz

Several years ago my friend Anne Neal, former President of ACTA, told me that people love quizzes.  I never found this to be truer than when I checked the audience of RTE one night recently & found 2,875 people had clicked on to the website that day.  First of all I was astonished @ the number – far & away an all time high for one day.  But upon further checking I found that this high activity was virtually all on quizzes in that eight of the top ten posts that day were quizzes – Water Bucket Quiz, Salt Deduction Quiz, Buffalo Quiz, Birthday Quiz, Rockefeller Center Christmas Store Quiz, Stock Market Quiz, & Compound Interest Quiz – long time readers will remember these quizzes because these good sports participated in all of them – & like me learned a lot.
 
Just think of the popularity of Tucker Carlson's weekly quiz on FNC to get a grip on the grip quizzes have on people.
 
The subject quiz of this post is a real life question from a charter member of this blog involving a WWII era generator, shown below, that was used to recharge batteries in military air fields.  The generator had been given to our subscriber – who loves this sort of thing - & after all the years of the equipment sitting idle he made substantial maintenance upgrades to it in his garage.  He made a new gas tank from a stove pipe & soldered in copper end caps & salvaged the original gas cap and shut off valve.  The old tank had a inch of gunk in the bottom, & the top of the tank looked like Swiss cheese when tested with water.  It rusted out from moisture collecting on the top half of the tank. The carburetor also had gunk and needed cleaning.  And after all this corrective work he told me that "after a few pulls" the generator was functional again.  After working with him in the engineering – construction business for twenty years I can well believe he made this relic work.
 
 
The problem that our expert mechanic presented to me pertained to fine tuning the right fuel mixture so that the generator would not smoke – it is 2 cycle (oil & gasoline).
 
He asked me – "Could you calculate the proper mixture?  Instructions: Mix ½ pint of oil to each gallon of gasoline.  What is the mixture for one quart of fuel?"
 
Please let me know how you work the problem reducing the specified proportions of oil & gasoline for a gallon of gasoline to a quart of gasoline.  Specifically, how many fluid ounces of oil should be added to each quart of gasoline for this generator?  I will post all correct answers or alternatively will send the solution I calculated privately to anyone who requests it if no one gets the right answer.
 
 

10 comments:

  1. Doug: Answer 2oz

    ½ pint oil =8oz

    Gal gas=128oz

    8 divided 128= 16

    1oz oil for every 16oz of gas

    2oz for 1quart (1quart=32oz)

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    1. Congrats - the first to get it right.

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  2. Hi Doug - I did the math on this quiz and if i am reading it right you need 16 parts gasoline for each one part oil. 1 gallon to 1/2 pint which works out to 128 ounces to 8 ounces or 1/16th.Once this equation is identified i just did the math and came up with the following answer. Not sure how far you wanted me to carry out the decimal points but i stopped at 4.

    answer = 30.1175 ounces of Gasoline and 1.8825 ounces of oil.

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    1. I see what you did. You took the ratio of oil & gasoline & proportioned it for a quart total. The question was “how many fluid ounces of oil should be added to each quart of gasoline for this generator” meaning that the total mixture would be larger than a quart.

      When I get fuel for my snow blower I put one oz. of oil in an empty can & take it to the gas station to have them put in exactly one gallon of gasoline so the can holds 1 gal of gasoline + 1 oz. of oil. I added one oz. of oil for a gal of gasoline per the instructions for my snow blower. I worked this problem like it was my snow blower.

      1/4 of a gal = 1 quart & 1/4 of 0.5 pint = 0.125 pint or one eight of a pint

      There are 16 oz. in a pint or two oz. in an eighth of a pint so you add 2 oz. of oil for a quart of gasoline.

      I give you an “A” instead of your usual “A+” – great job as always.

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  3. Doug, here's my solution:

    1 gallon = 8 pints, so for 8 pints of gasoline 1/2 pint of oil is added

    Similarly, 1 Quart = 2 pints = 2/8 gals =1/4 gals of gasoline and this amount will need 1/2 x 1/4 = 1/8 pint of oil.

    1 pint = 16 fl. oz., therefore 1 Quart of gasoline needs 16/8 = 2 fl. oz. of oil.

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  4. Good quiz - let’s see if I learned anything

    1 gal. = 128 oz.

    ½ pt. = 8 oz. , 128 oz : 8 oz., = 2.25 oz per quart.

    If right gives a ratio of 16 / 1

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    1. Everything you wrote was correct except the 2.25 oz per quart. You did not state how many oz are in a quart? Apply that to the 16/1 ratio. Check your arithmetic & you have got it.

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    2. 1 gal. = 128 oz. : 4, = 32 oz. Per qt.

      ½ pt. = 8 oz. , per gal., : 4 = 2 oz oil, per 1 qt. of fuel

      If right gives a ratio of 16 / 1 ?

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  5. I came up with 1 oz, oil, 31 oz. Gas.

    I calculated number of ounces in the gallon and quart, and based on that, use 1/8 of 8 oz. of oil for the quart, and 25% of fuel amount used for a gallon. rounded off allowing for gunk. I cant find my original scribbling for this, just remember the percentages. Send me your calculations to compare.

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    1. You are going about the problem the right way but some of your arithmetic is faulty. The key is to recognize that a quart is a quarter of a gallon so divide the 1/2 pint of oil by four & the gallon of gasoline by four & you have the number of pints per quart. Convert to ounces of oil after doing this calculation to give ounces of oil per quart of gasoline. Work it from there & you have it. Give it a try with this info & then I will send the solution – but you may not need it after this.

      Delete