Question

A drawer contains 24 pons and forks. There are 3 times as many spoons as forks.

a. Write a system of linear equations that represents this situation.

b. How many spoons are in the drawer?

c. How many forks are in the drawer?

Answer 1

18 spoons, and 6 forks are in the drawer.

Explanation:

a. pick 2 letters you want to represent the number of spoons and number of forks (I picked: s=number of spoons, f=number of forks)

-the drawer contains 24 spoons and forks in total so, the first linear equation is f+s=24

-there are 3 times as many spoons and forks so, the second linear equation is s=3f

work for c. f+(3f)=24

4f=24 (now, divide both numbers by 4)

f=6

work for b. s=3(6)

s=18

b. there are 18 spoons in the drawer.

c. there are 6 forks in the drawer.

Answer 2

According to Norman Let s=number of spoon Let f=number of forks "Since there are 3 times as many spoons as forks, s=3f Since the total number of utensils is 24, f+3f=24" "When solved for f, f=6" "Therefore, there are 6 forks and 18 spoons."