SOLUTION: Ashley's Coffee Shop makes a blend that is a mixture of two types of coffee. Type A coffee costs Ashley per pound, and type B coffee costs per pound. This month's blend used thre

Question 739016: Ashley's Coffee Shop makes a blend that is a mixture of two types of coffee. Type A coffee costs Ashley per pound, and type B coffee costs per pound. This month's blend used three times as many pounds of type B coffee as type A, for a total cost of . How many pounds of type A coffee were used?
Answer by josgarithmetic(39615) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Put in some numbers, even if they are variables.

Type A coffee costs Ashley A dollars per pound, and type B coffee costs B dollars per pound. This month's blend used three times as many pounds of type B coffee as type A, for a total cost of C dollars. How many pounds, a, of type A coffee were used?

That is using a = pounds of type A coffee
and
b = pounds of type B coffee

The ratio statement gives us , where b is the amount of type B coffee in this month's blend.

Accounting for cost, .

The description does not clearly tell which variables are known or unknown; but only describes their occurrence or existence. The QUESTION asks for how many pounds of type A coffee, the number which is here assigned as "a".

You have two equation, and either one or two unknown, a and b. We want to solve just for a:
b/a=3 gives us . SUBSTITUTE into the cost equation.

And continue solution steps to get a,

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