### Instruction: Barry wants to make a huge salad using only cucumbers and tomatoes. He will use a total of 280 pieces of vegetables. If there are thrice as many tomatoes as cucumbers, how many cucumbers will be used in the salad?### Response: The total ratio of the number of tomatoes and cucumbers is 3:1.
This means that the sum of the fractions that represent these vegetables is 4/4 or 1.
Therefore, the fraction that represents the number of cucumbers is 1/4, which represents 280 pieces of vegetables / 4 = 70 cucumbers.
The answer is 70