Esmerelda bought a bag of jelly beans. There were 24 green jelly beans, which made up 8% of all the jelly beans in the bag. How many jelly beans were in the bag?
Q. Esmerelda bought a bag of jelly beans. There were 24 green jelly beans, which made up 8% of all the jelly beans in the bag. How many jelly beans were in the bag?
Understanding the relationship: Understand the relationship between the part, whole, and percentage.The problem states that 24 green jelly beans make up 8% of the total jelly beans. We can use the percent formula: Part=Percent (as a decimal)×Whole.Here, the Part is the number of green jelly beans (24), and the Percent (as a decimal) is 8% or 0.08. We need to find the Whole, which is the total number of jelly beans.
Setting up the equation: Set up the equation to find the total number of jelly beans.Using the percent formula, we have:24=0.08×WholeLet's denote the Whole (total number of jelly beans) as 'W'.So, the equation becomes:24=0.08×W
Solving for 'W': Solve for 'W' by isolating it on one side of the equation.To find 'W', we divide both sides of the equation by 0.08:W=0.0824
Performing the division: Perform the division to find the total number of jelly beans.W=0.0824W=300
Verifying the solution: Verify that the solution makes sense.If there are 300 jelly beans in total and 24 are green, then the green jelly beans should indeed make up 8% of the total. To check:Percentage of green jelly beans =(Total number of jelly beansNumber of green jelly beans)×100Percentage of green jelly beans =(30024)×100Percentage of green jelly beans =8%This confirms that our solution is correct.
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