A school cafeteria sells sandwiches for $4.50 each, cartons of milk for $1 and bananas for $.50 each. One table of students spent $36.00 total. They bought 2 more milks than sandwiches and they bought two times more sandwiches than bananas. How many bananas did the students buy?

Question

I don't understand (obviously) 3 bananas ends up at $36.50, 2 ends up at $25.00 and 2 and 1/2 ends up at $30.75. This is my sons 6th grade homework and I really doubt they are looking for an answer of 2.85 bananas so what am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

number of bananas ---- x
sandwiches -----------2x
milks ---------- 2x + 2

.5x + 4.5(2x) + 1(2x+2) = 36
.5x + 9x + 2x + 2 = 36
11.5x = 34
x = 2.9 ..... ah!!

No wonder you can't make sense of the problem, the data is flawed.

If the question appears that way in the text, there must be a typo, since x clearly must turn out to be a whole number.