Question

Mrs Sogiba is catering for her son's birthday party. she has invited some of her son's friends to the party. the number of friends is a composite multiple of her son's age on his birthday. she has baked 48 cupcakes and each child will receive exactly the same number of cupcakes. use your knowledge of multiples and factors to find out how old her son will be on his birthday. (this is not his first birthday)hint- the trick to this question is to remember that the birthday boy will also get cupcakes... list all the factors of 48 ( because the children will all receive the same amount of cupcakes) then try to find a factor that gives a number that could be a a multiple of the boys age when you subtract 1 from the factor remember that the boy is turning at least 2 years old

Answer 1

Step-by-step explanation

Mrs Sogiba has baked 48 cupcakes and each child will receive exactly the same number of cupcakes.

`Factors\text{ of 48 = }1,2,4,6,8,12,24,48`

Recall composite factors are factors of a number that are not prime. Therefore the composite factors from the above are;

`\text{Composite factors = }48,24,12,8,6,4`

If we subtract 1 from the composite factors, the possible values becomes

`\text{Values}=\text{ 47,23,11,7,5,3}`

From the above, we can have

`\begin{gathered} Friends=3*4=12 \\ numberofcupcakes=12*4=48 \end{gathered}`

Therefore,

Answer: Age of son can be 3 Years