Question

A culinary club earns $1116 from a dinner service. They sold 32 adult meals and 60 student meals. An adult meal costs twice as much as a student meal.

What is the cost of an adult meal? Please explain and show all steps! The answer is 18, but I don't get how.

Answer 1

Well first, 32 x 18 = 576
Second 18 divided by 2 = 9
Third 9 x 60 = 540
Fourth 540 + 576 = 1116
Fifth Cost of adult meal 18
Sixth Cost of Student meal 9

Answer 2

$18

Explanation:

Let x represent the cost of an adult meal (the value we want to know). The cost of a student meal is half that, or x/2. The total cost of all the meals is ...

60(x/2) +32x = 1116

62x = 1116 . . . . . collect terms

x = 1116/62 = 18 . . . . divide by 62

The cost of an adult meal is $18.

_____

Additional comment

You can instead use a variable for the cost of a student meal, or you can use variables for both:

a = 2s

32a +60s = 1116

It makes sense here to solve this by eliminating the s variable in any of several ways, since you ultimately want to know the value of 'a'.