A bowl contains 100 green and red m&ms. For every 3 green you have 7 red pieces of candy. How many green m&ms are in the bowl?
3/10 = x/100
10x = 300
x = 30
There are countless methods to solve this but let me explain one way.
It says for every 3 green you will have 7 red, therefore in 10 m&ms you will get 3 green and 7 red.
3 + 7 = 10
However, you want 100 m&ms not 10. I'm sure you've learned that whatever you apply to one side of the equation, you do the same to the other side. Knowing this, you multiply the right side by 10, so you get 100 m&ms, and following the rule for equation, you also have to multiply the left side by 10.
(10)3+7=10(10)
Use distributive property...
30+70=100
There are 30 red and 70 green m&ms.
Oscar -- your last statement is wrong.
The question asks how many green m&ms. There were NOT 70 green candies.
I'm sorry, I swap the red and green m&ms by careless mistake :P
Take heed: It is important to double check your work or else something minor like this will get you a wrong answer.
Thank you Ms. Sue for pointing this out!
You are welcome, Oscar. We all make silly mistakes. :-)
To find the number of green M&Ms in the bowl, we can set up a proportion based on the given information.
Let's call the number of green M&Ms "x".
We know that for every 3 green M&Ms, there are 7 red M&Ms.
So, we can set up the proportion:
3/7 = x/100
To solve this proportion, we can use cross multiplication.
Cross multiplying, we get:
7x = 3 * 100
Now, we can divide both sides of the equation by 7 to isolate x (the number of green M&Ms):
7x/7 = (3 * 100)/7
x = 300/7
Using calculator, 300 divided by 7 is approximately 42.86.
Therefore, there are approximately 42 green M&Ms in the bowl.