Lerato is tasked to create a rectangular vegetable patch divided into three equal sections for tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers. She wants to maintain a ratio of 4:3:2 for the number of tomato plants to cucumber plants to bell pepper plants. If she plants 60 tomato plants, how many cucumber plants should she plant?

Using the ratio 4:3:2 and knowing there are 60 tomato plants, we calculate that Lerato should plant 45 cucumber plants to maintain the ratio for her vegetable patch.

Explanation:

Lerato is creating a rectangular vegetable patch and needs to maintain a ratio of 4:3:2 for the number of tomato plants to cucumber plants to bell pepper plants. Given that she plants 60 tomato plants, to find out how many cucumber plants she should plant, we can use the ratio provided. The ratio for tomatoes to cucumbers is 4:3. This means for every 4 tomato plants, there should be 3 cucumber plants. Since Lerato plants 60 tomatoes, we first find out how many groups of 4 tomato plants there are in 60, which is 60 ÷ 4 = 15 groups. Then, we multiply the number of groups by the ratio number for cucumber plants, which gives us 15 × 3 = 45 cucumber plants.