Peanuts by Charles Schulz for September 22, 1978

I agree #mathsucks

I can identify with this quite well….man, am I glad those days are gone long ago

That really is kind of a rough problem. To mix those two liquids together and get a final amount of exactly 12.5% butter fat, one would need 20.930232558139534883720(repeating) gallons of cream and 29.069767441860465116279(repeating) gallons of milk. These amounts are, of course, impossible to measure out. One can just simplify to 21 gallons of cream and 29 gallons of milk to get 50 gallons with 12.53% butter fat, though. The closest you could get percentage-wise using known standard measurements would be something like 20 gallons+3 quarts+1 pint+8 ounces+1 tablespoon+1 teaspoon of cream added to 29 gallons+1 cup+1 ounce of milk, but doing it like this would mean you aren’t getting exactly 50 gallons (just 49.998958 gallons) and you still aren’t getting the exact percentage (about 12.500177%). Perhaps the teacher didn’t think that one through.

This strip was adapted into “She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown”. Although in the beginning, we had a rare instance of actually hearing the teacher speak. She says, “Patty, do you have the answer to problem six?”

Definitely do the push-ups! This problem is a mess. The correct answer is that you need around 29.07 gallons of milk and 20.93 of cream. The algebra is doable but pretty hairy. The trial and error method would take quite a bit of honing.