Katelyn Prawitt
Math 1020
Doug Richards
Math 1020 Project
To interpret the percent strengths we must know that any percent strength can be
written in grams of pure drug/100 milliliters of solution. We must interpret the percent
strength 32.5%, 6.5% and 9.5%. Now that we know how to interpret them we write them 32.5
grams of pure drug is in 100 mL of solution, there is 6.5 grams of pure drug in 100 mL of
solution, and there is 9.5 grams of pure drug in 100 mL of solution. Next we are mixing the
bigger percent and the smaller percent to reach the middle percent. We must have a formula
to follow to make this work. The formula is F(the first/bigger percent strengths volume)=
V(volume needed) multiplied by N(the needed percent strength) minus S(the smaller percent
strength divided by B(the bigger percent strength) minus S(the smaller percent strength). We
plug in all our numbers to this equation and we round to the nearest tenth. We get 115.4 mL of
the 32.5% strength solution. To find the amount of pure drug in the 115.4 mL we know that
there are 32.5 grams of pure drug in 100 mL of solution so we multiply 32.5 grams by 115.4mL
and divide it by 100 mL to cancel out the mL and leave us with grams. After computing this, we
know that we have 37.5 grams of pure drug in 115.4 mL of solution. To find the amount of the
6.5 percent solution we subtract 115.4 from 1000 and get 884.6 mL. To find out how many
grams of pure drug there are in 884.6 mL of we know that there are 6.5 grams of pure drug in
100 mL of solution so we cancel out the mL by multiplying 884.6 and 6.5 and then divide it all
by 100 and you are left with 57.5 grams of pure drug in 884.6 mL of solution. The sum of the
two amounts of pure drug would be 57.5 grams plus 37.5 grams and you get 95 grams of pure
drug. Last, we must compute the amount of pure drug in the 1L of the 9.5% solution. We know
that there is 9.5 grams of pure drug in 100 mL of solution by interpreting the strength, so we
must cancel out the mL to see how many grams there are. We multiply 9.5 grams by 1000mL
and divide it all by 100mL. You get 95 grams of pure drug in 1L of 9.5% solution.
Katelyn Prawitt
Math 1020
Reflection of Project
People in the medical profession use math every day. These are some of the way math
is used in the medical field: converting numbers from the standard and metric systems,
measuring patient’s height and weight, administering the correct amount of medications,
determining patient’s daily fluid intake needs, and etc.
Medical math is used to teach students that are going into the medical field understand
what they need to know to correctly apply mathematical principles into temperatures, weights,
and measurements used in the health care system. It is important that the information that
they learn during their semester class of medical math is retained, so when they start working
in the medical field that they can properly take care of the patients in the way they need it.
To get a passing grade in our medical math class, you must get a C or better on the final.
To get a C or better on the final you must spend a good portion of time studying the material
that you learned from the beginning to the end. It is important to hold these medical math
students to a high standard because there are so many mistakes made in the medical field and
a lot of them come back to human error. Even if you get A’s on all the tests before the final,
you must prove that you know the information that you learned all semester before you can
move on to the medical program of your choice. I believe this is to protect everybody, the
public trusts that our health care professionals know what they are doing. Medical math is
more important than just a good grade because not just anybody off the streets is allowed to
administer medications and it needs to be done right to prevent further issues.