Flour costs $0.75 per pound and sugar costs $0.50 per pound. An order of flour and sugar weighs 16 pounds and costs $9.

Question

What equation could we write to represent that the total cost of the flour and the sugar in the order is $9? Let f represent the pounds of flour and s represent the pounds of sugar in the order.

Answer 1

To represent the total cost of the flour and sugar in the order, we can formulate an equation based on the given information.

Let:

• \( f \) = pounds of flour
• \( s \) = pounds of sugar

The cost of flour is $0.75 per pound, so the cost of \( f \) pounds of flour will be: \[ 0.75f \]

The cost of sugar is $0.50 per pound, so the cost of \( s \) pounds of sugar will be: \[ 0.50s \]

The total cost for the flour and sugar combined is given as $9. Therefore, we can write the equation for the total cost as: \[ 0.75f + 0.50s = 9 \]

Additionally, we have another condition which states that the total weight of the flour and sugar together is 16 pounds. This can be expressed as: \[ f + s = 16 \]

So, the two equations we have are:

1. \( 0.75f + 0.50s = 9 \)
2. \( f + s = 16 \)

These equations can be used to solve for \( f \) and \( s \).