SOLUTION: Would you please help us solve this problem. My daughter has quite a few of these for homework tonight and is struggling with most of them. Is there a particular pattern that she

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Question 809720: Would you please help us solve this problem. My daughter has quite a few of these for homework tonight and is struggling with most of them. Is there a particular pattern that she can look for in word problems to help solve?This is for Algebra 1. She currently has an 85 in the class, but this chapter is throwing her. Thank you so much for your help.
A coffee merchant has two grades of coffee, Grade A sells for $9 per pound, and Grade B $6 per pound. How many pounds of Grade A coffee must he mix with 20 pounds of Grade B coffee to obtain a new blend that can be sold for $7 per pound?
Answer by josmiceli(19441) (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!
It really helps if she assigns a variable to the
thing they want her to find and write it down.
In this case:
Let = pounds of Grade A coffee needed
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Now she can also write down an expression for
the cost of the coffee blend. She should write it
down also. It is:

This is just ( cost/pound )x( pounds ) + ( cost/pound )x( pounds )
----------------------------
Now she can go to the final step which is:
( total cost of the blend ) / ( total pounds of the blend ) = ( given cost/pound )

Multiply both sides by

10 pounds of grade A coffee are needed
check answer:

OK
Hope this helps