Question

Larry bought 12 containers of pasta salad for a school picnic. Each container held the same number of ounces of salad. Students finished the pasta salad in 8 of the containers.

A.Let p equal the number of ounces of pasta salad in one container. Write an expression with two terms to represent how many ounces of pasta salad are left.


B.Simplify the expression you wrote in problem 6 to create an equivalent expression. Use the distributive property.

Answer 1

a) Amount of pasta remaining ≤ p(12 - 8)

b) Amount of pasta remaining ≤ 4p

Explanation:

Amount of pasta in one container = p

Let y represent the amount of pasta that is left.

Since the students eat 8 containers worth of pasta out of 12 pasta containers

But we weren't told that the students did not eat out of the 4 remaining pasta containers

y ≤ p(12 - 8)

where y = p(12 - 8) if the students did not touch the remaining 4 containers.

b) Using the distributive property

p(12 - 8) = 12p - 8p

y ≤ 12p - 8p

y ≤ 4p