Question

You, Newton, and descartes volunteer this summer. You have two times as many volunteer minutes as Newton. Descartes has 3 times as many volunteer minutes as Newton. You, Newton, and descartes have 5,040 minutes altogether. How many minutes do you volunteer?

Answer 1

You volunteer for 1,680 minutes, found by setting up an equation based on the information that you have twice as many volunteer minutes as Newton, Descartes has three times as many, and together you have a total of 5,040 minutes.

Step-by-step explanation:

Let's denote the number of volunteer minutes by Newton as N. According to the question, you have twice as many volunteer minutes as Newton, so you have 2N minutes. Descartes has three times as many volunteer minutes as Newton, which means Descartes has 3N minutes. Combined, the three of you have a total of 5,040 minutes. This gives us the equation: N + 2N + 3N = 5,040. Simplifying the equation, we get 6N = 5,040. Dividing both sides of the equation by 6 gives us: N = 840. Since you have twice as many volunteer minutes as Newton, to find out how many minutes you volunteer, we multiply N by 2: Volunteer minutes = 2N = 2 * 840 = 1,680. Therefore, you volunteer for 1,680 minutes.