Question

Elvira, the cafeteria manager, has just received a shipment of new trays with the school logo prominently displayed in the middle of the tray. After unloading 4 cartons of trays in the pizza line, she realizes that students are arriving for lunch and she will have to wait until lunch is over before unloading the remaining cartons. The new trays are very popular and in just a couple of minutes 24 students have passed through the pizza line and are showing off the school logo on the trays. At this time, Elvira decides to divide the remaining trays in the pizza line into 3 equal groups so she can also place some in the salad line and the sandwich line, hoping to attract students to the other lines. After doing so, she realizes that each of the three serving lines has only 12 of the new trays. "That's not many trays for each line. I wonder how many trays there were in each of the cartons I unloaded?"

Answer 1

240

Explanation:

If 24 students have taken trays from the pizza line, and each of the three serving lines has 12 trays, then there are 24 trays + 312 trays = 60 trays in total. Since the trays were divided into 3 equal groups, there are 60 trays / 3 groups = 60/3=20 trays in each group.

Since 4 cartons of trays were unloaded in the pizza line, and each carton had 60 trays, there were 460 = <<4*60=240>>240 trays in all.