Question

Elena sells two kinds of pasta, plain and spinach. Both types take 4 cups of flour per batch. The plain pasta uses 2 eggs per batch, and the spinach pasta uses just one. She wants to make both types using all the ingredients she has: 12 cups of flour and five eggs. How many batches of spinach pasta will she make?

A. 4 batches
B. 1 batch
C. 5 batches
D. 2 batches

Answer 1

Elena can make 3 batches of spinach pasta using 12 cups of flour and 5 eggs since each batch requires 4 cups of flour and 1 egg. The limiting factor here is the amount of flour.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student wants to know how many batches of spinach pasta Elena can make with 12 cups of flour and 5 eggs, given that each batch of plain pasta uses 4 cups of flour and 2 eggs, and each batch of spinach pasta uses 4 cups of flour and 1 egg.

First, we should identify the limiting ingredient, which is the eggs in this case. Since the plain pasta uses 2 eggs per batch and the spinach pasta uses 1 egg per batch, we need to make as many batches of spinach pasta as possible without running out of eggs before using all the flour. We have 5 eggs, so we can make up to 5 batches of spinach pasta (5 eggs needed in total for 5 batches). However, we must also consider the amount of flour we have. With 12 cups of flour and each batch of spinach pasta needing 4 cups, we can only make 3 batches (12 cups ÷ 4 cups per batch). Therefore, we are limited by the amount of flour and can only make three batches of spinach pasta with the ingredients on hand.