Two types of coffee.

Question

Toms coffee shop makes a blend that's a mixture of two types of coffee. Type A coffee costs $4.65/lb., and Type B coffee costs $5.85/lb. Tom made 186 lbs. of the blend, for a total cost of $970.50. How many pounds of Type B coffee did Tom use?

Answer 1

This is a fairly well known type of problem which leads to a system of linear equations. But we can do it with just one variable & one equation:

 

Let x = # of lbs of coffee type A, so then # lbs of type B coffee has to be 186-x.

 

Value equation:  970.50 = x(4.65) + (186-x)(5.85)  <<<<< weight times value for type A & type B gives total value.

 

You can solve this for x. and then calculate 186 - x.