You are to fix dinners for 250 people at a convention of Mexican food fans. Your

Question

You are to fix dinners for 250 people at a convention of Mexican food fans. Your recipe calls for 3 peppers per serving (one serving per person). However, you have only habanero peppers on hand. The spiciness of peppers is measured in terms of the scoville heat unit (SHU). On average, one pepper has a spiciness of 4000 SHU and one habanero pepper has a spiciness of 300000 SHU. To get the desired spiciness, how many habanero peppers should you substitute for the peppers in the recipe for the 250 dinners?

Explanation / Answer

This unique little problem simply involves a bunch of dimensional analysis:
1. 250 people
2. 3 normal peppers / 1 serving
3. 1 serving / 1 person
4. One pepper = 4000 SHU
5. One habanero pepper = 300000 SHU
6. One habanero pepper = 75 normal peppers (Using the previous two bits of information)

250 people (1 serving / 1 person) = 250 servings

250 servings (3 normal peppers / 1 serving) = 750 normal peppers

750 normal peppers (1 habanero pepper / 75 normal peppers) = 10 habanero peppers

Thank you for posting such a fun problem; I hope you see how the dimensional analysis works.

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