A horse trainer has a bag of pink sugar mints for horse treats. She needs five treats per training session. The bag holds 42 mints. Which equation shows the number of horses that she can train and is a solution to viable option?

Answer 1

To determine how many training sessions the horse trainer can conduct with the bag of 42 mints, where each session requires 5 treats, we can set up the following equation:

Let \( x \) be the number of training sessions. Since each session requires 5 mints, the total number of mints used for \( x \) sessions is \( 5x \).

The equation based on the total number of mints in the bag, which is 42, is:

\[ 5x \leq 42 \]

To find the maximum number of complete training sessions, we can solve for \( x \):

\[ x \leq \frac{42}{5} \] \[ x \leq 8.4 \]

Since the number of training sessions must be a whole number, we take the largest whole number less than or equal to 8.4, which is 8.

Thus, the trainer can conduct a maximum of 8 training sessions with the 42 mints, and the equation that represents this scenario is:

\[ 5x \leq 42 \]

The viable solutions for \( x \) (the number of sessions) will be \( 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 \).