Question

Casey, a second grade boy, is raising caterpillars which each have the same number of legs. Let C represent the number of legs that the caterpillars Casey has, and L represent the number of legs each caterpillar has. Write an expression for the total number of legs that the caterpillar and Casey have together.

Answer 1

To express the total number of legs that Casey and his caterpillars have together, if n is the number of caterpillars and L is the number of legs per caterpillar, the expression would be (n × L) + 2. This takes into account the legs of all caterpillars and Casey's two legs.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student is asking us to write an expression for the total number of legs that the caterpillars Casey is raising and Casey himself have together. We know that C represents the total number of legs of all the caterpillars, and L represents the number of legs each caterpillar has. To find the total number of legs, we would need to know how many caterpillars there are, let's say n, and then we could calculate C by multiplying the number of caterpillars n by the number of legs L each caterpillar has (C = n × L). However, since we are also considering Casey's legs (humans have 2 legs), if we want the expression for the total number of legs that the caterpillars and Casey have together, we would simply add 2 to our previous product: Total Number of Legs = C + 2 or Total Number of Legs = (n × L) + 2.