Mindy and Troy combined ate 9 pieces of wedding cake. Mindy ate 3 pieces of cake and Troy had 41 of the total cake. How many pieces of cake were there in all?
Q. Mindy and Troy combined ate 9 pieces of wedding cake. Mindy ate 3 pieces of cake and Troy had 41 of the total cake. How many pieces of cake were there in all?
Set Up Equation: Let's denote the total number of pieces of cake as T. According to the problem, Mindy ate 3 pieces of cake, and Troy ate 41 of the total cake. Together, they ate 9 pieces. We can set up the following equation to represent this situation:Mindy's pieces + Troy's pieces = Total pieces eaten3+(41)T=9
Isolate Term: Now we need to solve for T. To do this, we'll first isolate the term containing T on one side of the equation. We can subtract 3 from both sides to get:(41)T=9−3
Perform Subtraction: Perform the subtraction on the right side of the equation: 41T=6
Multiply Both Sides: To find T, we need to multiply both sides of the equation by 4 to cancel out the 41 on the left side:4×(41)T=6×4
Find Total: Perform the multiplication on both sides:T=24
More problems from One-step inequalities: word problems