Check Your Understanding

1. Question

   Bernie’s ice-making company produces ice cubes using a 10-ton machine and electricity (along with water, which we will ignore as an input for simplicity). The quantity of output, measured in pounds of ice, is given in the table below.

   Quantity of electricity (kilowatts)	Quantity of ice (pounds)
   0	0
   1	1,000
   2	1,800
   3	2,400
   4	2,800

   1. What is the fixed input? What is the variable input?

   2. Construct a table showing the marginal product of the variable input. Does it show diminishing returns?

   3. Suppose a 50% increase in the size of the fixed input increases output by 100% for any given amount of the variable input. Construct a table showing the quantity of output and the marginal product in this case.