SOLUTION: Hi, I have a word problem I have been staring at for hours, trying to figure out. Here is the problem, and I will tell you what I have so far.... A bakery sold 3/5 of its muff

Question 325496: Hi, I have a word problem I have been staring at for hours, trying to figure out.
Here is the problem, and I will tell you what I have so far....
A bakery sold 3/5 of its muffins. The remaining muffins were divided equally among the 3 employees. Each employee got 16 muffins. How many muffins did the bakery have at first? Solve this problem in two way: with the aid of a strip diagram and with equations.
So far, this is what I am able to come up with, the bakery sold 3/5 of its muffins, so 3/5(x) each employee received 16, which means there were 48 left. I cannot get the equation in my head to figure this out. I think once I have that done, I can move onto the diagram.

Answer by jim_thompson5910(35256) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Let x = number of muffins total

Since "A bakery sold 3/5 of its muffins", this means that it sold muffins. So there are muffins left

Because "The remaining muffins were divided equally among the 3 employees", we know that we divide the remaining muffins by 3 to get

So each worker gets muffins. But we also know that "Each employee got 16 muffins" so this means that

Start with the given equation.

Multiply both sides by 15.

Multiply 16 and 15 to get 240

Divide both sides by 2 to isolate x.

Reduce.

So the bakery baked 120 muffins.
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