Question

A text book store sold a combined total of 347 history and physics textbooks in a week. The number of history textbooks sold was 79 more than the number of physics textbooks sold. How many textbooks of each type were sold?

Answer 1

Let the number of history textbooks be h and the number of physics textbooks be p.

It was given that the bookstore sells a combined total of 347 books. Thus we have:

`h+p=347`

It is also given that the number of history textbooks sold was 79 more than the number of physics textbooks. This gives:

`h=p+79`

We can substitute for h into the first equation:

`p+79+p=347`

Solving, we have:

`\begin{gathered} 2p+79=347 \\ 2p=347-79 \\ 2p=268 \\ p=(268)/(2) \\ p=134 \end{gathered}`

Substitute for p in the second equation, we have:

`\begin{gathered} h=p+79 \\ h=134+79 \\ h=213 \end{gathered}`

Therefore, there were 134 physics textbooks and 213 history textbooks.