A publisher needs to send many books to a local book retailer and will send the books in a combination of small and large boxes. Each small box can hold 20 books and each large box can hold 30 books. There were 4 times as many large boxes sent as small boxes, which altogether can hold 280 books. Write a system of equations that could be used to determine the number of small boxes sent and the number of large boxes sent. Define the variables that you use to write the system.

Question

Mathematics

Vance Gallegos

18 March, 10:58

A publisher needs to send many books to a local book retailer and will send the books in a combination of small and large boxes. Each small box can hold 20 books and each large box can hold 30 books. There were 4 times as many large boxes sent as small boxes, which altogether can hold 280 books. Write a system of equations that could be used to determine the number of small boxes sent and the number of large boxes sent. Define the variables that you use to write the system.

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Answers (1)

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Kemp · Answer 1

20*s+30*l = 280

4*s=l

Step-by-step explanation:

Let's say that the number of small boxes is s and the number of large boxes is l. Then, 20*s equals the amount of books in small boxes (as there are 20 books per small box), and 30*l for the amount of books in large boxes. Then, we know that 4 times the amount of small boxes, s, equals l, so 4*s=l. Then, as we know that the amount of books that can be held is 280, we can add the amount of books for each type of box, or 20*s+30*l, to get 280. Our equations are as follows:

20*s+30*l = 280

4*s=l

As we can define l in terms of s, making it so that we can limit the top equation to 1 variable, we can use this to determine the number of each type of box