SOLUTION: I am having a hard time with this problem. Can you help me? Mr. Bedell has 107 fiction books in his classrooom. Mr Bedell's fiction collection is 27 more than a third of his non

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Question 104612: I am having a hard time with this problem. Can you help me?
Mr. Bedell has 107 fiction books in his classrooom. Mr Bedell's fiction collection is 27 more than a third of his non-fiction collection. How many non-fiction books does Mr. Bedell have? Thank you..
Found 2 solutions by doukungfoo, stanbon:
Answer by doukungfoo(195) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Ok to find out how many non-ficiton books Mr. Bedell has we have to use the given information to write an equation.
Lets start by calling the non-fiction books x. This will be the variable in our equation that we will solve for.
non-ficition books = x
Now lets look at what we are given
Given: Mr. Bedell's fiction collection is 27 more than a third of his non-ficiton collection.
Ok "27 more" is +27
and "a third of his non-fiction collection" is %281%2F3%29%28x%29 which is the same as x%2F3
Put these two together and we have:
%28x%2F3%29%2B27
Now we are also told that Mr. Bedell has 107 fiction books in his classroom.
so this means that:
%28x%2F3%29%2B27=107
Now we have an equation that we can solve.
%28x%2F3%29%2B27=107
first subtract 27 from both sides of the equal sign
%28x%2F3%29%2B27-27=107-27
the 27's on the left side cancel out leaving this
%28x%2F3%29=107-27
%28x%2F3%29=80
now to solve for x multiply both sides by 3
3%2A%28x%2F3%29=80%2A3
3x%2F3=240
x+=+240
Answer: Mr. Bedell has 240 non-fiction books
Check by replacing x in the original equation with 240
%28x%2F3%29%2B27=107
%28240%2F3%29%2B27=107
80%2B27=107
107=107


Answer by stanbon(75887) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Mr. Bedell has 107 fiction books in his classrooom. Mr Bedell's fiction collection is 27 more than a third of his non-fiction collection. How many non-fiction books does Mr. Bedell have?
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Let number of non-fiction books be "x".
Then # of fiction books is (1/3)x+27
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EQUATION:
(1/3)x+27 = 107
(1/3)x = 80
x = 240 (# of non-fiction books)
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Cheers,
Stan H.