Thursday, October 04, 2007

Argh...

A coin bank contains Nickels, Dimes, and Quarters. There are 14 nickels, 1/6 of the coins are dimes, and 3/5 are quarters. How many total coins are there?

Why can't I do this?! Ok, take a shot at it. I already know the answer, but I would really love to know how to get there.

3 comments:

HST said...

Questions like this are why I was a THEATRE major.

Good Luck.

Callie said...

It's easy. Find the common denominator between 1/6 and 3/5. That would be 30. So, you have 5/30 dimes, 18/30 quarters, and 7/30 nickles.

You know you have 14 nickles.

So, 7/30X=14 (ie - 7/30 of the entire amount of coins equals 14 nickles).

In order to get 1X (or just X for short), you flip 7/30 around, and multiply both sides by 30/7.

14/1*30/7 = 420/7

Divide 7 into 420, and X=60.

There are 60 total coins.

Nickles = 14
Dimes = 10
Quarters = 36

HST said...

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