Don Garcia needs at least 24 units of vitamin A per day. Each green pill provides 4 units and each red pill provides one unit. Green pills cost 3.5¢ each and red pills cost 1¢ each. How many of each kind of pill should he take to minimize his cost?
Green pills cost (3.5 cents/4 units) = 0.875 cents per unit.
Red pills cost (1 cent/1 unit) = 1 cents/unit.
Green pills exclusively should be used, and you will need 6 of them, costing a total of 21 cents. 24 red pills would have cost 24 cents. There is no benefit in mixing read and green.
To minimize the cost, Don Garcia should take only green pills. Each green pill provides 4 units of vitamin A, so he will need a total of 24/4 = 6 green pills to meet his vitamin A requirement.
The cost of each green pill is 3.5 cents, so the total cost for 6 green pills would be 6 * 3.5 = 21 cents.
Using red pills would not minimize the cost in this case because each red pill provides only 1 unit of vitamin A, and Don Garcia would need 24 red pills which would cost 24 cents. Therefore, it is more cost-effective for him to take the green pills exclusively.