Read the following real-world story problem. Fill in blanks with values of your choice according to the specifications. Answer the questions as they are asked.

Question

It is a beautiful day, and 12 friends decide to rent some boats to take out on the lake. The friends have [choose an amount of money between $200 and $350] to spend on renting boats. Each boat costs [choose an amount of money between $30 and $50] to rent. Write and solve an inequality that represents the number of boats the friends could rent based on the amount of money they have.

Answer 1

Let's choose an amount of money that the friends have: $300.

Next, we'll choose a cost to rent each boat: $40.

Now, we can formulate the problem. Let \( x \) represent the number of boats the friends can rent. The total cost of renting \( x \) boats will be \( 40x \) dollars.

The inequality representing the situation is: \[ 40x \leq 300 \]

Now, we will solve the inequality: \[ x \leq \frac{300}{40} \] \[ x \leq 7.5 \]

Since the number of boats must be a whole number, we take the integer part of the solution. Therefore, the maximum number of boats the friends can rent is \( 7 \).

To summarize:

• The friends can rent a maximum of 7 boats.