Question

Charlie went to Juarez, Mexico, on a shopping trip. He bought silver rings at $5 each and bracelets at $8 each. If he bought a total of 19 items and spent $131, how many bracelets and rings did he buy?

Answer 1

Answer: 7 silver rings and 12 bracelets

Explanation:

You can use a system of equations to solve this problem. We can start by making the amount of silver rings he bought x and the amount of bracelets he bought y.

Since he bought 19 total items we can start forming our first equation which is x + y = 19.

Each silver ring is $5 so we can put the cost of all the rings he bought as 5x. We can do the same with the bracelets that cost $8 each. That means the total cost for the bracelets was 8y. It is given to us that the total cost of all the items is $131, so we can add the total prices of rings and the total prices of the bracelets. We can then form our second equation: 5x + 8y = 131.

Then you solve the system. We can use the substitution method to solve this. We can make x = 19 - y (from the first equation) and plug it in for x in the second equation. The second equation will become 5(19 - y) + 8y = 131.

You then solve this and you should get y=12. We can then plug the value of y into the first equation. This gives you an x value of 7.