SOLUTION: You are making 24 pounds of your own potting soil mix of sphagnum peat moss and coarse sand. You buy the peat moss in bags that weigh approximately 2 pounds. a. The last time yo

Question 173760: You are making 24 pounds of your own potting soil mix of sphagnum peat moss and coarse sand. You buy the peat moss in bags that weigh approximately 2 pounds.
a. The last time you made potting soil, you used 9 bags of sphagnum peat moss and 4 bags of coarse sand. Use this information to find the number of pounds in a bag of coarse sand.
b. Write an equation in standard form that models the possible combinations of bags of sphagnum peat moss and coarse sand you can use.
c. List three possible combinations of whole bags of sphagnum peat moss and coarse sand you can use to make the potting soil.
Answer by Mathtut(3670) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
a. assuming that we made a 24 pound mix last time, we know that 9 bags times 2 pounds per bag is 18 pounds of moss. since we have 24 altogether 24-18=6 pounds left for 4 bags of sand...so pounds per bag of sand
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b.We can now writea formula now that we know that we want a 24 pound mix and that a bag of moss is 2 pounds per bag and sand is 1.5 pounds per bag.
let a bag of moss and bag of sand b represented as m and s respectively
so:
:
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c. let m = 3,5 and 7
:
m=2--->2(3)+1.5s=24--->6+1.5s=24--->1.5s=18--->s=12
:
m=5--->3(5)+1.5s=24--->15+1.5s=24-->1.5s=9---->s=18
:
m=7--->3(7)+1.5s=24--->21+1.5s=24-->1.5s=3---->s=2
:
(m,s) coordinates (2,12),(5,18),(7,2)combinations of moss and sand for potting soils
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