Real-Life Math
Sometimes you feel like James Bond with all the neat gadgets you get to work with. Take today, for instance. You were measuring the amount of crude oil in a storage tank using a device called an ultrasonic transmitter.
The transmitter sends out sound impulses that bounce off the top of the oil. You measured how much oil was in the tank based on the amount of time it took for the impulse to travel to the top of the liquid and back again.
Part A
Earlier in the day, you had to install a new turbine in an oil pipe. The turbine is a device that measures oil flow by generating brief electrical pulses. The stamp on the side of the turbine indicates that it generates 180 pulses per gallon of oil.
The plant you are working at runs on the metric system. You need to convert the 180 pulses per gallon figure into pulses per liter. You know that there are 3.78 liters in one U.S. gallon. How many pulses per liter does the turbine generate?
Part B
You have to find a way to turn this pulse count into a quick measure of the flow rate of the oil in liters per second. One way to do this would be to count how many pulses occur in 1 second.
Using that information and the answer you found in Part A, you could then calculate the flow rate in liters per second. Unfortunately, the readout device you have (an ammeter) doesn't count pulses. It measures average electrical current.
The electrical pulses generated by the turbine cause bursts of current to flow. The readout on your ammeter averages the amount of current flowing over time. With more current bursts occurring, the average current increases.
A single pulse generated per second by the turbine results in a current of 4 mA (milliamperes) read by the ammeter. Using the number of pulses per liter of oil flow you found in part A, figure out how many mA are measured by the ammeter when 1 liter per second of oil is flowing.