Candy bar A contains ____ calories and candy bar B contains ____ calories.

Question

One bar of candy A and two bars of candy B have 780 calories.

Two bars of candy A and one bar of candy B contain 789 calories.

 Find the caloric content of each candy bar.

Answer 1

You can solve this problem by creating two equations with two unknowns and using elimination to find the number of calories for each candy bar.

Let's use the variable ,a, to represent the NUMBER of calories in one bar A and the variable ,b, to represent the NUMBER of calories in one bar B.

Using the information provided in the problem for the two situations, we can write the following equations:

1a + 2b = 780

2a + 1b = 789



Now we can combine these equations and use elimination to find the number of calories in bar A (or a):

Multiply the second equation by -2:

2a + 1b = 789 becomes -4a - 2b = -1578

Now combine these two equations:

1a + 2b = 780

-4a - 2b = -1578

-3a = -798

a= 266 calories

Bar A has 266 calories.

For Bar b:

1a + 2b = 780

266 + 2b = 780

2b = 514

b= 257 calories

Bar B has 257 calories