Given that the first mass of the duck is 0.05 kg and it gains weight at a rate of 0.042 kg/week, the equation that would represent this scenario is,
y = 0.05 + 0.042x
where y is weight and x is the number of weeks. To determine the number of weeks in which the duck's mass becomes 0.890,
0.890 = 0.05 + 0.042x
The value of x from the equation is 20.