Lauren is planning a catered dinner party for her parents' anniversary with a dinner budget of $288. She has selected two options: a chicken dinner that costs $9 per plate and a steak dinner that costs $12 per plate. Lauren is working on the guest list and must also determine how many of each meal to order.

Question

Let
represent the number of chicken dinners and let
represent the number of steak dinners.

Complete the equation that represents this situation.
Make sure that you write the coefficient first, then the variable. For example 3 times
should be entered
and 5 times
should be entered
.

Answer 1

To represent the situation with an equation, we can denote the number of chicken dinners as \( c \) and the number of steak dinners as \( s \).

The cost for the chicken dinners is \( 9c \) (since each chicken dinner costs $9) and the cost for the steak dinners is \( 12s \) (since each steak dinner costs $12).

The total cost of the dinners should not exceed the budget of $288. Therefore, we can write the equation as:

\[ 9c + 12s = 288 \]

This equation captures the total cost of both dinner options in relation to the budget.