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Samantha have six times as many fish in her aquarium as Lily. Lily and Samantha have 70 fishes together. how many fish does each girl have?

User Fuad
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1 Answer

20 votes
20 votes

The problem indicates that Samantha has 6 times as many fish as Lily.

If we call the number of fishes that Lily has "x", then the number of fishes that Samantha has will be "6x".

Lily: x

Samantha: 6x

Now, since together they have 70 fishes, we need to add the two quantities (x and 6x) and equal them to 70:


x+6x=70

To solve this problem we need to solve this equation for x.

The first step is to add the like terms on the left of the equation:


7x=70

And then, divide both sides of the equation by 7:


\begin{gathered} (7x)/(7)=(70)/(7) \\ \end{gathered}

As you can see 7 in the numerator and denominator on the left side cancel each other:


x=(70)/(7)

And on the right side, 70/7 is equal to 10:


x=10

Let's remember our initial definitions:

Lily: x

Samantha: 6x

Since we now know that x=10, we conclude that Lily has 10 fishes.

To calculate the amount that Samantha has multiply 6 by 10:


6x=6(10)=60

Samantha has 60 fishes.

Answer:

Lily: 10

Samantha: 60

User Aecolley
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