Question

Susan is buying supplies for a party. Spoons only come in bags of 2 and forks only come in bags of 16. What is the least number of spoons and the least number of forks she can buy so that she has the same number of each?

Answer 1

She needs to get 8 bags of spoon and 1 bag of fork

Explanation:

Here in this question, we want to know the least number of spoons and the least number of bags to be bought so that there are same number of each.

Basically, to calculate this, we need the lowest common multiple of 16 and 2. The lowest common multiple of both is 16 (2 is a factor of 16)

So the lowest number of each she can buy to have the same number of pieces is 16.

Kindly recall that spoons come in bags of 2. So to achieve the 16, she needs 8 bags.

Since fork comes in bag of 16, to achieve 16, she only need a single bag of fork.