At the Natural History museum Paula saw 5 times as many beetles as spiders. She saw 6 more spiders than caterpillars. If Paula saw 50 insects and spiders, how many of each kind did she see?

Answer 1

Start with one variable and then use it to set up your next unknown...and so on. Do you understand?

Answer 2

I guess that was a "no" answer??? OK... let me help a little more. If you'd still like my help. Lets look at setting a variable us for the spiders first. Ok? We will use a letter "S" for the number of Spiders. Lets make a sentence now. She saw: S=spiders; (5xS)= beetles; Caterpillars=(S-6);
50 = S + (5xS) + (S-6)
50 = S + 5S + S - 6
50+6= S + 5S + S
56 = 7S
56/7 = S
8 = S

Answer 3

Now that we have solved for the 'S' variable, you can plug the value into the other formulas to figure out the number of 'bugs' that were present. Here goes: Spiders is 8, Beetles is 5x8 or 40; Caterpillars are 8-6 or 2.
Now, double check the answer by making sure they all add up to 50. 40+8+2=50.

I'm so sorry you didn't understand the first part of the question last night. In the future please don't use expletives, no matter how frustrated you may feel. This is a family page here. Thank you.