How do you calculate the number of cans in this arithmetic progression?

Cans are arranged in a pile such that each row has one less can than the row below. There is a total of 3240 cans in the pile. How many cans are there in the bottom row?

1 Answer
Jan 5, 2018

[Math Processing Error]

Explanation:

If there is one can in the top row and there are [Math Processing Error] rows, then there are [Math Processing Error] cans in the bottom row and the total number of cans would be:

[Math Processing Error]

So let's try to solve:

[Math Processing Error]

Multiply both sides by [Math Processing Error] to get:

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Note that [Math Processing Error]

So there are [Math Processing Error] rows of cans with [Math Processing Error] in the bottom row.