Question

Brown rice costs $2 per pound, and beans cost $1.60 per pound. Lin has $10 to spend on these items. Let (b) be the number of pounds of beans Lin buys and (r) be the number of pounds of rice she buys when spending all her money on the meal.

Write an equation relating the two variables.

Answer 1

To write an equation representing the total amount spent on brown rice and beans, we use the prices per pound and the budget of $10 to create the equation: 2r + 1.6b = 10, where r is the number of pounds of rice and b is the number of pounds of beans.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student is asking for help in writing an equation that represents the total amount of money spent on brown rice and beans given specific prices and a budget constraint. In this scenario, brown rice costs $2 per pound, and beans cost $1.60 per pound. Lin has $10 to spend on these items. If we let (b) represent the number of pounds of beans Lin buys, and (r) represent the number of pounds of rice, then the equation that relates these two variables is:

2r + 1.6b = 10

This equation must hold true for Lin to use all her money on the meal with no money left over. This is similar to the listed examples where the cost of each item is multiplied by the number of units purchased, such as 10 apples x 50 cents each, and added together to find the total amount spent.