Question

Curtis and Wendy are selling candy bars to raise money for a trip. Wendy sold 9 more candy bars that Curtis did. Together they sold a total of 145 candy bars. How many candy bars did Wendy sell?

Answer 1

By defining a variable for the number of candy bars Curtis sold and writing an equation for their combined sales, we can deduce that Wendy sold 77 candy bars.

Step-by-step explanation:

To solve how many candy bars Wendy sold, we start by defining variables for the number of candy bars Curtis and Wendy sold. Let's call the number of candy bars Curtis sold C.

According to the question, Wendy sold 9 more than Curtis, so Wendy sold C + 9 candy bars.

Since we know that together they sold a total of 145 candy bars, we can write that as an equation:
C + (C + 9) = 145.

To find C, we combine like terms and solve for C:
2C + 9 = 145.

Subtracting 9 from both sides gives us 2C = 136, and then dividing both sides by 2 yields C = 68.

Now that we know Curtis sold 68 candy bars, calculating Wendy's sales is straightforward. Wendy sold 68 + 9 = 77 candy bars.