Question

A snack cart sells lemonade for$2 and hot dogs for $5. The vendor sold 86 items today for a total of $330. Which equation is true?

Answer 1

The following equations should be the true choices to solve for this.

x + y = 86 (total number of items)
2x + 5y = 330 (total cost)

Answer 2

L + H = 86

L($2) + H($5) = $330

Explanation:

The statement indicates that a total of 86 items were sold, between lemonades and hot dogs, but we don’t know the amount of each one, so we have two variables: the amount of lemonades sold (L) and the amount of hot dogs sold (H), so:

L + H = 86

To solve this problem, we need another equation because we have two unknow variables. The statement also says that there were sold $330 and the price of each item. The amount sold of each item times the price of it will give us the earnings for each item and the sum of the earnings give us the total earnings, $330, so:

L($2) + H($5) = $330

Thus, using these two equations we can find the amount of lemonades (L) and hot dogs (H) sold.