Miss Jennifer is buying pencils in packs of 12, notebooks in packs of 16, and red pens in boxes of 20. She needs to have the same number of pencils, notebooks, and red pens. What is the smallest number of packs of each type that she should buy?

Question

Miss Jennifer is buying pencils in packs of 12, notebooks in packs of 16, and red pens in boxes of 20. She needs to have the same number of pencils, notebooks, and red pens. What is the smallest number of packs of each type that she should buy?
Answer:
Miss Jennifer needs to buy 
 packs of pencils, 
 packs of notebooks and 
 packs of red pens.

Reiny · Answer

This is similar to finding the lowest common multiple 12 = 4*3 16 = 4*4 20 = 4*5 LCM = 4*4*3*5 = 240 packs of pencils = 240/12 = 20 packs of notebooks = ... packs of red pens = ...