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Question

The top three countries in oil consumption in a certain year are as follows: the United States, China, and Japan. In millions of barrels per day, the three top countries consumed 32.2 million barrels of the world’s oil. The United States consumes 12 million more barrels a day than China. China consumes 3.2 million barrels a day than Japan. How many barrels of the world oil consumption did the United States, Japan, and China consume?

Answer 1

For this question, I'm going to ignore the fact that all these numbers are in millions of barrels per day. For now, I'm just going to look at the numbers they give us:

1. United States, Japan, and China consume 32.2 total
2. United States consumes 12 more than China
3. China consumes 3.2 more than Japan

I'm going to assign a variable to represent the quantity that each country consumes: U = United States, C = China, J = Japan. In order to figure out how much the United States consumes, we need to know how much China consumes. In order to figure out how much China consumes, we need to know how much Japan consumes. However, they don't tell us how much Japan consumes. If we can find J, we can find the other two. To solve for J we need to turn our information into equations:

1. U + J + C = 32.2

2. U = C + 12

3. C = J + 3.2

If C = J + 3.2, then we can just replace J + 3.2 with C in the second equation to get U = (J + 3.2) + 12. Once again, we can do the same thing with U and C in the first equation. This will give us ([J + 3.2] + 12) + J + (J + 3.2) = 32.2. If we simplify this equation we can solve for J:

1. ([J + 3.2] + 12) + J + (J + 3.2) = 32.2 → (J + 15.2) + J + (J + 3.2) = 32.2 → 3J + 18.4 = 32.2 → 3J = 13.8 → J = 4.6

Now that we know that J = 4.6, we can replace 4.6 with J in our first and second equations to find the value of C and then U:

1. C = J + 3.2 → C = (4.6) + 3.2 → C = 7.8
2. U = (7.8) + 12 → U = 19.8

Now we have our values for U, C, and J. Don't forget that these numbers represent millions of barrels per day. So our final answer is: The United States consumes 19.8 million barrels of oil per day, Japan consumes 4.6 million barrels of oil per day, and China consumes 7.8 million barrels of oil per day.

Answer 2

J represents the amount consummed by Japan

J + 3.2 repreents the amount consummed by China

J + 3.2 + 12 represents the amount consummed by U.S.

J + J + 3.2 + J + 12 = 32.2

Can yo solve for J and answer?