Question

Katie is making hair clips to sell at the craft fair. To make each hair clip, she uses 1 barrette and 1 precut ribbon. The barrettes are sold in packs of 12, and the precut ribbons are sold in packs of 9. How many packs of each item does she need to buy to make the least number of hair clips with no supplies left over?

Answer 1

3 packs of barrettes and 4 packs of ribbons.

Explanation:

All we need to do here is to find the least common multiple between 12 and 9.

We can factor both of these numbers to do so.

12: 3*4: 3*2*2

9: 3*3

We can cancel out one 3 (since it appears in both prime factorizations) and multiply what we have left to find the LCM.

2*2*3*3=36

This means that she will be making 36 clips/needs 36 of each item.

36/12=3

3 packs of barretes.

36/9=4

4 packs of ribbons.