Answer to Question #72793 in General Chemistry for John

Question

The daily dose of ampicillin is 115 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. If a patient weighs 35.5 lbs., how many grams of ampicillin should he have? **Write out 4 relevant conversion factors as fractions that you’ll need to solve the problem.

Answer 1

Converting the body weight into kg (using the first conversion factor):
35.5 lb (1 kg/2.2lb )= 16.1 kg .
Calculating the daily dose in milligrams of ampicillin (using the second conversion factor):
16.1 kg (115 mg/1 kg day )= 1851.5 mg/day .
Calculating the dose in milligrams required for 1 day (using the third conversion factor):
1 day (1851.5 mg/ 1 day) = 1851.5 mg .
Converting milligrams to grams (using the fourth conversion factor):
1851.5 mg (1 g / 1000 mg) = 1.85 g