Question

At a circus, 135 clowns are getting into cars. Blue cars hold 20 clowns and red cars only hold 15. There are a total of 8 cars. How many of each are there?

Answer 1

Let's call the number of blue cars "b" and the number of red cars "r". We can set up two equations to represent the information given in the problem:

b + r = 8 (because there are a total of 8 cars)
20b + 15r = 135 (because the total number of clowns is 135)

We can use the first equation to solve for one of the variables in terms of the other:

b = 8 - r

Then we can substitute this expression for "b" into the second equation and solve for "r":

20(8 - r) + 15r = 135
160 - 20r + 15r = 135
-5r = -25
r = 5

So there are 5 red cars and 3 blue cars (because 8 - 5 = 3).