The total mass of 10 pennies is 27.5 g, which is made up of old and new pennies. Old pennies have a mass of 3 g and new pennies have a mass of 2.5 g. How many old and new pennies are there?Can't figure out equation. Show work?
1 Answer
You have
Explanation:
Start with what you know.
You know that you have a total of 10 pennies, let's say
Now focus on the total mass of the pennies, which is given to be 27.5 g. You don't know how many old and new pennies you have, but you do know what the mass of an individual old penny and of an individual new penny is.
More specifically, you know that each new penny has a mass of 2.5 g and the each old penny has a mass of 3 g. This means that you can write
Now you have two equations with two unknowns,
Use the first equation to find write
Now take this expression into the second equation and solve for
This means that
Therefore, you have