Mary has two bags of nuts; one with 80 % peanuts, and the other with 5 % peanuts. To make a 14 lb bag of 53 % peanuts,how much of each should mary use?

Question

Mary has two bags of nuts; one with 80 % peanuts, and the other with 5 % peanuts. To make a 14 lb bag of 53 % peanuts, how much of each should mary use?

Answer 1

let x be # of lbs of the 80% mixture, so 14-x lbs of the 5% mixture will be used to make the resulting bag of 14 lbs, 53% peanuts.

 

This can be written as 0.80x +0.05(14-x) = 0.53(14) and to begin to solve for x, I suggest that you can clear fractions.