You are helping your friend research hybrid cars. You learn that on a long- distance trip, the Chevrolet Volt traveled 571.95 miles on 12.3 gallons of gas. You also learn that the Toyota Prius traveled 753.48 miles on 15.6 gallons of gas. Determine which car got better gas mileage. A Toyota Prius

B Chevrolet Volt

C The Two Hybrids Are Tied for the best mileage

D Not enough information to determine The answer

Explanation:

To get the mileage per gallon, you divide the number of miles over the number of gallons.

For the Chevy Volt, the mileage is 571.95/12.3 = 46.5 miles per gallon (mpg)

For the Prius, the mpg rating is 753.48/15.6 = 48.3

So the Toyota gets the better mileage per gallon.

If you're curious why we divide the numbers like that, consider this example

You drive 200 miles using 5 gallons of gas. We can form the ratio

200 miles : 5 gallons

To get the mpg rating, we need to know how many miles we can drive on 1 gallon of gas. So we divide both sides by 5

200/5 miles : 5/5 gallons

40 miles : 1 gallon

This hypothetical situation leads to 40 mpg