Puzzler
Life on the Farm
Problem
A farm contains turkeys and
horses. There are 116 heads and 282 legs.How many turkeys are there?
Use algebra to solve this problem. Start by assigning variables to the unknown
quantities. Use "h" to represent the number of horses and
"t" to represent the number of turkeys. We know that there are a
total of 116 heads, which means that the number of horses plus
the number of turkeys equals 116:
h + t = 116
We also know that
there are a total of 282 legs, and since horses have 4 legs and
turkeys have 2 legs, we can write an equation for the total
number of legs:4h + 2t = 282 Now we have two equations with two
variables. We can solve for one variable in terms of the other in
the first equation: h = 116 - t Substituting this expression for
h into the second equation, we get: 4(116 - t) + 2t = 282
Expanding the multiplication and simplifying, we get: 464 - 2t +
2t = 282 Simplifying further, we get: 2t = 182 Dividing both
sides by 2, we get: t = 91 Therefore, there are 91 turkeys on
the farm.
How did you do?
Solution