Here, we want to work with a direct variation
The variables are the number of gallons of paint g and the area A of the basement
From the question, we are told that the number of gallons vary directly as the area to be painted
Mathematically;
[tex]\begin{gathered} g\propto\text{ A} \\ \\ \text{Introduce constant k} \\ \\ g\text{ = kA} \end{gathered}[/tex]a) we want to get the value of k, which is the variation constant given that one gallon of paint covers 100 square feet
Basically, we have to substitute 1 for g and 100 for A
We have this as;
[tex]\begin{gathered} 1\text{ = k }\times\text{ 100} \\ k\text{ = }\frac{1}{100}\text{ gallon per square ft} \end{gathered}[/tex]b) We want to calculate the number of gallons that will cover 530 square feet
We simply can calculate this by substituting 530 for A in the equation
We have this as;
[tex]\begin{gathered} g\text{ = }\frac{1}{100}\times530 \\ g\text{ = 5.3 gallons} \end{gathered}[/tex]c) Here, we want to calculate the area that could be painted by 8.5 gallons
Mathematically, we simply have to substitute 8.5 for g
We have this as;
[tex]\begin{gathered} 8.5\text{ = }\frac{1}{100}\times\text{ A} \\ A\text{ = 100}\times8.5 \\ \\ A\text{ = 850 square ft} \end{gathered}[/tex]