Question

Mr. Jackson has 30 pennies and 42 dimes that he will be putting into containers for groups of students to use for a math activity. He wants to put an equal number of pennies and an equal number of dimes into each container. He will use all the coins.

Answer 1

if you have 6 groups then there will be 5 pennies and 7 dimes in each group.

Answer 2

There could be 6 containers with 5 pennies and 7 dime each.

Explanation:

Mr. Jackson whants to put equal numbers of pennies and an equal number of dimes into each container. To know the number of containers could be there, we need to find the greatest common factor between 30 and 42.

Divisors of 30: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 15, 30.

Divisors of 42: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 14, 21, 42.

Now, observe that the greatest common factor between 30 and 42 is 6, that means there could be a maxium of 6 groups, the number of pennies per group is 30/6=5, and the number of dimes per group is 42/6=7.

Therefore, there could be 6 containers with 5 pennies and 7 dime each.