The potatoes weigh 50 pounds.

It’s pretty easy to see that, if a 100-pound bag of potatoes is 99% water, then the sack contains 99 pounds of water and 1 pound of "dry potato stuff." Stated a different way, 99/100 of the sack is water, and 1/100 of the sack is "dry potato stuff."

And as the water evaporates, the 1 pound of "dry potato stuff" always remains.

Now we get to the point where the water content is 98%. That means that the "dry potato stuff" is 2% of the whole sack. Or, it is 1/50 of the whole sack. And it still weighs 1 pound.

If it is 1/50 of the sack and weighs one pound, then the sack weighs 50 pounds.

You’ve got to lose a full 50 pounds of water to get the water content down to 98%. To get the water content down to 90%, you’ve got to lose 90 pounds of water, because the bag must weigh 10 pounds: 9 pounds of water, 1 pound of dry potato stuff.

And when there is only 1 pound of water left, then the bag weighs 2 pounds, and is 50% water, 50% dry potato stuff.

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