Question

Would you rather have Option A or Option B?OPTIONOPTIONB10aenteA0098500 grams of quarters1 kilogram of nickels

Answer 1

We want to know which one of the following will contain more money:

0. 500 grams of quarters

,

1. 1 kilogram of nickels

We are going to find the approximate quantity of quarters on 500 grams, and the quantity of nickels on 1 kilogram, having on mind that the average nickel weights 5 grams and the average quarter weights 5.67 grams.

We will divide the weight by the weight of a quarter or a nickel, and we obtain:

`(500g)/(5.67g)=88.18\text{ quarters}`

Which is approximately 88 quarters. For the nickels:

`(1,000g)/(5g)=200\text{ nickels}`

Now, converting the nickels and the quarters to cents we obtain:

`\begin{gathered} \text{For the 88 quarters: }88\cdot25c=2200\text{ cents} \\ \text{For the 200 nickels: }200\cdot5c=1000\text{ cents} \end{gathered}`

This means that is better to have 500 grams of quarters than 1 kilogram of nickels.