Rick has a bowl of just strawberries and grapes with his lunch. There are 5 times as many grapes as strawberries, for a total of 45 grapes in the bowl. How many strawberries are in the bowl?

Answer 1

Let's denote the number of strawberries as \( s \) and the number of grapes as \( g \).

According to the problem, we know two things:

1. The number of grapes is 5 times the number of strawberries.
2. The total number of grapes is 45.

We can express these relationships with the equations: \[ g = 5s \] \[ g = 45 \]

Since both equations involve \( g \), we can set them equal to each other: \[ 5s = 45 \]

To find \( s \), we can divide both sides by 5: \[ s = \frac{45}{5} = 9 \]

Now, we have determined that the number of strawberries is \( s = 9 \).

To ensure correctness, we can check how many grapes correspond to this number of strawberries: \[ g = 5s = 5 \times 9 = 45 \]

Thus, the calculations check out. The number of strawberries in the bowl is \(\boxed{9}\).