At the Natural History museum Paula saw 5 times as many beetles as spiders. She saw 6 more spiders than caterpillars. If Paula saw 50 insects and spiders, how many of each kind did she see?

Question

At the Natural History museum Paula saw 5 times as many beetles as spiders. She saw 6 more spiders than caterpillars. If Paula saw 50 insects and spiders, how many of each kind did she see?

Answer 1

Start with one variable and then use it to set up your next unknown...and so on. Do you understand?

Answer 2

I guess that was a "no" answer??? OK... let me help a little more. If you'd still like my help. Lets look at setting a variable us for the spiders first. Ok? We will use a letter "S" for the number of Spiders. Lets make a sentence now. She saw: S=spiders; (5xS)= beetles; Caterpillars=(S-6);

50 = S + (5xS) + (S-6)
50 = S + 5S + S - 6
50+6= S + 5S + S
56 = 7S
56/7 = S
8 = S

Answer 3

Now that we have solved for the 'S' variable, you can plug the value into the other formulas to figure out the number of 'bugs' that were present. Here goes: Spiders is 8, Beetles is 5x8 or 40; Caterpillars are 8-6 or 2.

Now, double check the answer by making sure they all add up to 50. 40+8+2=50.

I'm so sorry you didn't understand the first part of the question last night. In the future please don't use expletives, no matter how frustrated you may feel. This is a family page here. Thank you.

Answer 4

To solve this problem, let's assign variables to the unknown quantities. Let B represent the number of beetles, S represent the number of spiders, and C represent the number of caterpillars that Paula saw.

From the problem, we know that Paula saw 5 times as many beetles as spiders, so we can write the equation B = 5S.

We also know that she saw 6 more spiders than caterpillars, so we can write the equation S = C + 6.

Furthermore, we know that Paula saw a total of 50 insects and spiders, so we can write the equation B + S + C = 50.

Now we have a system of three equations, and we can solve it to find the values of B, S, and C.

First, let's substitute the value of B from the first equation into the third equation:

(5S) + S + C = 50

Simplifying, we get:

6S + C = 50

Next, let's substitute the value of S from the second equation into the third equation:

6(C + 6) + C = 50

Simplifying, we get:

7C + 36 = 50

Subtracting 36 from both sides, we get:

7C = 14

Dividing both sides by 7, we find:

C = 2

Now we can substitute the value of C into the second equation to find S:

S = C + 6
S = 2 + 6
S = 8

Finally, we can substitute the values of S and C into the first equation to find B:

B = 5S
B = 5(8)
B = 40

Therefore, Paula saw 40 beetles, 8 spiders, and 2 caterpillars.