Question

A water station table at a marathon starts with 200 plastic cups on it. Every minute, 15 cups are taken from the table. How many minutes could have passed if there are fewer than 50 cups on the table?

Answer 1

To find out how many minutes could have passed if there are fewer than 50 cups on the table, we set up an inequality: 200 - 15n < 50. Solving this inequality, we find that n > 10.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find out how many minutes could have passed if there are fewer than 50 cups on the table, we need to determine how many cups are left after each minute. Starting with 200 cups, 15 cups are taken away every minute. We can create a subtraction equation to represent this: 200 - 15n, where n is the number of minutes that have passed. We want to find the value of n when the number of cups is less than 50, so we set up the inequality: 200 - 15n < 50. Solving this inequality, we find that n > 10.

Therefore, if there are fewer than 50 cups on the table, more than 10 minutes must have passed.