on a farm there is 18 pigs and chickens (all together). There are 52 legs, how many pigs and how many chickens are there? Show how you got your answer. i know there are 10 chickens and 8 pigs, but i did that through trial and error, can you help me figure out the right math to do for this problem.

2 answers

There are two ways to do it, the farmer's way and the mathematicians's. I prefer the farmer's way.

First, the farmer's way:
We have 18 animals and 52 legs.
If we have 9 of each, that makes an average of 3 legs each animal, we get 3*18=54 legs. We only have 52. So change one pig (9-1=8) for a chicken (9+1=10) to get 52 legs (two less). That makes 10 chickens and 8 pigs. No calculators, no pain either.

Now the mathematicians way:
Let p be the number of pigs, then the number of chickens is (18-p).
The total number of legs is thus
4*p + 2(18-p) = 52
2p = 52-36
p = 16/2
=8
(18-p) = 18-8 = 10
Answer: there are 8 pigs and 10 chickens.
make a funny sentense for each math word