Question

Walmart has cashews that sell for $2 a pound and peanuts that sell for $1.50 a pound. Meijer sells cashews for

$2.50 a pound and peanuts for $1 a pound. Mike paid $26 at Walmart and Jim paid $29 at Meijer for the same
amount of nuts. How many pounds of cashews and peanuts did they buy?

Answer 1

Let "c" represent the amount of cashews they each bought.

Let "p" represent the amount of peanuts they each bought.

Mike: 2c + 1.5p = 26

Jim: 2.5c + 1 p = 29

That's the system you need to solve. We can do this with substitution.

Start with Jim:

2.5c + p = 29

p = 29 - 2.5c

Substitute that into Mike and solve for c:

2c + 1.5p = 26

2c + 1.5(29 - 2.5c) = 26

2c + 43.5 - 3.75c = 26

-1.75c + 43.5 = 26

-1.75c = - 17.5

c = 10

Now substitute that back into Jim's last equation:

p = 29 - 2.5c

p = 29 - 2.5(10)

p = 29 - 25

p = 4

So they each bought 10 pounds of cashews and 4 pounds of peanuts.